Steller's eagle

[michael]

Steller's eagle on the pack ice in the Nemuro Straits, Japan.
Estimates indicate that there may be as few as 2000 of these eagles left in the wild. With an 8 feet wingspan they are a magnificent sight.


1d mk 11, canon 500mm f4.0, 1.4 converter
1/640, f8.0

[Juan Aragonés]

Wellcome on board Michael. You choosed a terrific species for your first post. The light and pose of the bird is superb but I think that it is too tight in the frame. More room at the bottom, left and right (much more on the right because the eagle is looking in that direction) would produce a better result. If this image is a crop maybe you could consider the posibibility of a different croping. I am not sure about the reason why but the image looks a litle bit flat on my monitor (maybe you applied too much highlight/shadows filter?) and lacking details in the plumage. Thiscan be due to a big crop or due to the uploading process to BPN (?). Anyhow, the image is really SPLENDID and I would love to see an aptimized version. If you need help just drop me a PM :)
Juan

PS can´t wait to see more of this Steller´s eagle images;)

[michael]

Hello Juan
Thank you for your comments, it looks very flat on my monitor compared with the image I tried to upload, the original image size was around 190kb and the uploaded image was about 50kb.
Michael

[Juan Aragonés]

Sometimes the automatic resizing of the uploading process can produce a lost in image quality but yours is under our image size limit (200Kb) Not sure about the reason why :confused:

Michael, I made some levels adjustments in the eagle to try to fix the problem, added some noise reduction to the BG and a litle touch of sharpening for web presentation.

[Rene' Villela]

Michael, I live in Japan. One of my clients from the North of Japan, is going to take me in January to see if we can find some of these eagles. He tells me that so many of them arrive at the end of December to the Oga peninsula in Akita prefecture. After seeing your images will be very hard waiting until January! thanks!

[michael]

Thank you Juan your adjustments have made a significant improvement.

Rene, A trip to the north of Japan in January should be just about ideal (not that I am an expert). The best time to see them on the pack ice is after a day of bad weather, they are forced to go out onto the ice to hunt/feed.
You should also see white tailed sea eagles at the same time.

Michael

[Maxis Gamez]

I was going to suggest the contrast but Juan nailed it. Good profile image. Remember you can post up to a 200kb image which will prevent low resolution image compression artifacts.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Cool bird, pose and setting. I agree on a wider crop and the sharpening issue has been covered.

[Doug Brown]

Good advice on a spectacular bird! I agree with Axel about a wider crop. I'd love to see one of these someday.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Michael,
Even though I like tight crops........this may be just a bit tight........even for me! I really like what Juan did with the re-post........brought out a great deal of details. Takes a while.......but you will get used to the upload compression and figure out a few tricks. No one mentioned it.....so I will.........the snow/ice texture of the BG..........really put this image over the top for me. Nicely done.

[Tony House]

Fantastic looking bird, shame it's the same old story on the survival of a species.

Great image.
Tony

[Piotr Shpakowski]

This bird is like a dream for me.I really like Juan's redaction.I also think that with little more room around the bird would be better.Great light and pose.Congratulations!

[John Chardine]

The phenomenon of a properly sized image ending up much smaller once downloaded to BPN seems to be a rare and random event. It happened to me once (190k to 30k if I remember). For fun I removed that image and lightly resampled the image in Ps, including bringing up to 96 from 72 dpi (which should have absolutely no effect), and it loaded with almost no reduction in size. I have still not figured out the particular thing I did to the image that fixed the problem. The severely reduced images show massive jpeg anomalies and may have contributed to the softness in the original post here.

This is a magnificent bird that is quite tight in the frame. Love the look back and the brown and yellow colour.

Quick question Michael- when you say pack ice do you mean at sea? If so I did not realise that Japan experienced this.

[michael]

John
I am just learning that preparing an image for the web is not as simple as it first appears and is a skill that I have yet to acquire.
The pack ice occurs at sea and is literally ice floes jammed together by the wind and currents. The place where I took this image was in the Nemuro straits off the most northern of the japanese islands called Hokkaido, it is approximately on the same latitude as Siberia.

[Charles Glatzer]

Michael,

Sweet image of an incredible bird.

I am greatly looking forward to going to Japan with you and the group in 2010.

Happy Holidays to you and yours,

Chas

[Arthur Morris]

I liked the originally posted image but Juan's repost is fabulous. Only need for me would be more room at the bottom. Love the prefect head angle.