Immature Bale Eagle liftoff

Captured this immature Bald Eagle in SW Montana last summer. The juveniles are relatively tame compared to the adults. This bird was perched and allowed a relatively close approach until he/she had had enough of my presence and launched. I think this the best of the series.

Taken with a Canon 5DIV w/ a 400mm DOII plus 1.4x (560mm), hand held, 1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 800. Converted in DPP4 controlling the RGB values of the highlights at approx, 235. Cropped a bit in Photoshop, NIK Detail extractor to lighten up the dark tones in addition to a slight Curves adjustment to do the same, Hue and color balance to enhance the reds a bit. No additional sharpening after a 4 unsharpmask in DPP4.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome and hope you enjoy!

Frank

Good take-off shot. I don't know the bird or the skies there but the sky looks a bit lilac to me. I'm also sure you could get more detail out of the bird by using something like Shadows and Highlights.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Colin Driscoll

Good take-off shot. I don't know the bird or the skies there but the sky looks a bit lilac to me. I'm also sure you could get more detail out of the bird by using something like Shadows and Highlights.

---

Hi Colin. Do appreciate the look. I think you are correct re the lilac sky color. Actually I had to look up "lilac" in that I am not good with colors. There is a slight reddish ting to the sky that I believe happened when trying to get a little more color out of the bird. Creating a mask on the bird in the levels layer helped. I assume you are referring to the Highlight and Shadow sliders in DPP4. I have yet to try that, but appreciate the suggestion.

Again, thanks for the look.

Frank