Bald Eagle Portrait (captive)

[Inge Schepers]

Hi everyone,

This is a bald eagle that is part of a show at the Safari Park "Beekse Bergen" in the Netherlands. Since we do not have bald eagles in the wild, this was my first opportunity to photograph one. The photo was taken in August.

Equipment: Canon EOS 30D, Sigma 50-500mm at 500mm, F10. This is a crop of about half the size of the original image.

Inge

[Lana Hays]

Inge
You have a nice pose with the eagle and a pretty decent BG....something not always workable at such shows. The details have a smooth appearance. Did you perhaps run some noise reduction on the image? I think as presented, the image may be a little too centered. You could crop more but with a 50% crop already, it may be too much. Depending on what the original looked like you might be able to actually crop so that there is more bird in the image and have a nice composition. I think it also needs to be a little brighter. You have a nice image to work with......and I think that it can be even better.

[Jim Neiger]

Hi Inge,

I like the composition, bg, and pose. The Eagfle appears a bit dark and it's white feathers look a bit on the gray side.

[Inge Schepers]

Thanks for your replies. I did not run a noise reducer over the image, but I had to save it 3 times, reducing the quality with each try. I had a hard time getting it below 150kb.

Lana, I have plenty of bird in the original photograph. All of it, actually. I cropped it because I wanted a close-up of its head, and also because the full bird shows leather strips at its feet. I have no problem "admitting" that this is a captive bird, but I prefer to make the photo look like it isn't. If you had a choice would you place the bird a little more to the right"? Since this is the upper right part of the original image, I don't think I have room to place it more to the left.

I can try lightening up the bird a little in Photoshop, although I am not very good at using it yet. I was very worried about over-exposing the whites and the yellow beak. I was told that it is easier to make an under-exposed image a little lighter, than the other way round. It was one of those days where light conditions kept changing every few seconds (partially cloudy). I did shoot in RAW, so it shouldn't be too hard to give it another try. :)

Thanks again for all your comments, because I really want to use all your feedback so that I can improve my skills.