Immature Bald

[Jeffrey Sipress]

A proud young eagle displaying his (or her) prowess in sweet light just before flying off. Prince Rupert , BC, Canada. Canon 1DsIII, 500 +1.4

http://machinearts.com/bpnimages/eagle5.jpg

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great pose, good details and eye contact. I would darken or clone out the little bit of sky next to the bird's left wing since it is distracting. The bird is too centered for my taste, I could see it as vertical crop, too.

[Todd Frost]

Nice of eagle to pose for you. Don't mind the sky showing through the trees. It seems that sometimes we want studio backgrounds in this tech age and it doesn't always work that way. Agree that it would make a nice vertical.

Todd

[Randy Stout]

Jeffrey:

Good looking bird. Try to include all your tech. details. I would be curious what your f/stop was. Smaller DOF if possible would have been a nice choice here to minimize the background.

Randy

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Killer pose/eye contact and nice soft light!

[Fabs Forns]

Lovely light on the bird and branches. I don't know how I would crop this different because the right side shows the end of branch. You could try and burn the sky if cloning is not your style.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Thanks everyone. I have no problem with cloning, and already removed a pesky distraction here and there. The light area does not bother me, as it's small and not pure white. What I can't seem to do is extract the efix data from the file. I've searched PS and Bridge, and just can't get that text. Any tips (OSX)?

[arash_hazeghi]

Awesome habitat shot, subject separation from BG is very good.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Thanks everyone. I have no problem with cloning, and already removed a pesky distraction here and there. The light area does not bother me, as it's small and not pure white. What I can't seem to do is extract the efix data from the file. I've searched PS and Bridge, and just can't get that text. Any tips (OSX)?

I guess you 'saved for web' which deletes the EXIF info. You can see it in either your RAW or TIFF file.

[Todd Frost]

If you use exif viewer for firefox you have to do some digging but I came up with, 1/400, f5.6, multi seg metering, auto wb along with camera model and lens + 1.4 tc.

Todd

[Daniel Cadieux]

I'd be OK with the comp with about half of the empty space at bottom cropped out. I would also definitely eliminate the bright area near the wing. It may not be white, but it is still distracting. Nice perch, and I love the way the leaves at top nicely frame the eagle :-)

[Chris Zink]

Are you sure this beautiful image is an immature Bald Eagle and not a Golden Eagle? I am not an ornithologist, but the immature bald eagles out here on the east coast (of which I have taken hundreds of images) tend to have a little white on the head by the time they are as mature as this bird looks. Also, they have a lot more white feathers on the chest when they are immature, not the tan color in your image. See this image: http://www.trinityriverdrifters.com/images/immature-bald-eagle.jpg and http://www.birdsasart.com/BaldEagle-imm-landing-SQ-YL8X9525-Homer,-Aslaska.jpg. Also their beaks are also beginning to turn yellow and their eyes are yellow, not orange. I seriously don't mean to doubt, but that has been my experience.

Maybe John Chardine can chime in?

Chris

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Yes, Chris, One person I was with thought that it was a golden. With so many young baldies around, the similarities may have confused me. I thought Goldens were mostly all brown. I'm no expert, but I need to look into this. Thanks!

[Stu Bowie]

Jeffrey, lovely pose, and one way of getting around some of the highlighted sky is to crop in from the right, as he is looking left. ( as we see the image ) Great detail, and a larger aperture may have sorted the BG out.

[Kiran Poonacha]

My heart skip a beat when I see raptors. Thanks for posting..