Female Bald Eagle

[Duane Noblick]

First post (be gentle) and I would like to share with you the female of the pair of Bald Eagles I have followed since March 2008. This was taken December 6th 2008 as they started working on their nest for the 2009 nesting season.

http://www.pbase.com/duane_va/image/110401871/original.jpg

Canon 40D
Canon 400mm f/5.6L
AV mode
f/7.1
Partial metering
+1/3 EC
1/800
320 ISO
Tripod was used and the image is cropped.

Thank you,

Duane

[Jack Zievis]

Hello Duane,
Nice shot with excellent detail. My only comment is the angle which probably could not be helped. The exposure is very good.

[Jory Griesman]

Beautiful eagle portrait, and well exposed. Many eagle shots that I've seen, probably moreso in flight, tend to have noisy blacks (?underexposed, and brought up in levels/curves), but this is much better. BTW, did you use flash? Some may say background too busy. Was there any other angle to help avoid this.

[John Chardine]

The BG and lighting gave you some challenges here Duane, but you have ended up with a pretty nice image. The detail in the body feathers is excellent.

Usually images of birds above you don't work too well, but you can compensate (get away with it!) some by trying to capture the bird as it is looking down. It would be nice to see more eye contact in this one. The pine in the BG is distracting but you could lighten it a little and apply a blur to reduce this effect.

[Duane Noblick]

Thank you for the critiques and the advice. We're limited with the areas to photograph them from so we make due with the light and how their nest is set up...the angle can't be avoided. Eagles, like most birds/animals/people are creatures of habit and prefer the same perches for the most part. No flash is used with any of my Avian photography.