Conowingo Bald Eagle
Spent about 5 hours at Conowingo Dam in Maryland yesterday. Captured this guy after grabbing a fish and heading back to the trees.
Canon 7D; 400mm F/5.6L USM
F/7.1, 1/3200, ISO 400
LR4: reduce highlights, increase the shadows; reduce the saturation on the blue sky
Comments?
...Jerry
Hello Jerry , What a beautiful Photograph . To me , It looks like you handled some tuff light very well ,I Like it ! one thing I have to remind myself ,that I will repeat here . Make sure to leave enough room for the frame .It may be a tad close on the right side .
Clyde, I understand and agree. What I would have loved to do is have the eagle positioned on the right side of the frame, flying toward the center. Unfortunately, I don't have any "canvas" to the left of the posted image (I just learned that term in a recent post). Furthermore, I only have Photoshop CS3 which doesn't provide for content-aware canvas extension - bummer!Originally Posted by Clyde Hopper
...Jerry
Hi Jerry, super capture of the big bird and its fish! You definitely had tough lighting but you did the right thing and exposed for the whites. I would consider bringing the shadows slider up a skosh more and maybe even the blacks as well, to try to bring out the underwing areas more. Really good BIF technique and a difficult focus situation. You got nice detail in a lot of key places. Good one!
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
Really great comments. Here's take two.
First, I recropped (turns out I did, indeed, have some additional area to the left of the bird).
Next, I upped the shadows & blacks. Not surprisingly that brought out significant noise underwing, so I selectively reduced the noise in these areas.
So... this seems to be a significant improvement to my eyes. Further comments?
...Jerry
Hi Gerry- Nice one. Good comments above.
I note your comment about Content-aware fill. There are other ways to skin a cat as they say! I used a simple and quick cloning technique with a soft brush and different flow rates, ending with quite a low rate to be subtle. Also dodged the shadow side of the face and burned in the other to balance it up a bit more. It's a good thing to keep in mind that the more the sun is behind you rather than off to one side or the other, the more even the light. I am not saying always have it behind you but too extreme an angle (called phase angle) and you get the result here of one side of the face in bright light and the other side in shadow.
There was a moderate yellow cast to the image which did not look to me like a time-of-day thing so I removed it using a technique described here:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...-John-Chardine (scroll to pane 10 to start).
Last edited by John Chardine; 10-12-2012 at 11:16 AM.
Nice picture, what an interesting moment in nature. A solid exposure with a good kit, the additional canvas and shadow removal makes the image much stronger. The whites in the neck area look on the edge but overall nice exposure control. Might consider leveling the subject - maybe my head in crooked too?
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 10-12-2012 at 02:46 PM.
Jerry...this is a winner! Your time spent of 5 hrs paid off handsomely with this image. The processing you did in repost was an improvement! Reall.....y nice work!
BTW....What did the eagle population look like at Conowingo? good? fair? excellent? I need to get down there sometime soon.
Bob, Thanks for the kind words. I'd rate the Eagle population at Conowingo as "good" There seems to be lots more action than 1 month ago, but you can still go for 30-60 min with no action at all. Weather is nice which is a "plus". However, the population of photographers is growing.
btw: I went to Bombay Hook today and the Snow Geese are beginning to gather.
...Jerry
@John Chardine, Thanks for the suggestions. I really like what you've done. I want to learn about the LAB color space techniques and your post may be just the thing to get me started. I suspect it will be a few days before I can get my head around it.
...Jerry
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