Hi Colin- Welcome to BPN and the Eager to Learn forum. I think you will find this a great place to grow in your nature photography.
Your timing was perfect in this image. It's not easy to capture that specific moment. The image looks sharp and the shutter speed was enough to stop the action of the bird, although the water is a little blurry. As for composition, I would give more space at the top and less at the bottom. By doing this you would give the bird some virtual room to move into. Ideally with flying birds you want to try to catch them coming towards you rather than away like this, but your view at least gives us a really good view of the fish being caught. Finally I'll just say that high-contrast birds like Bald Eagles are a real challenge to photography is bright sun like you have here. Your exposure has brought out the detail in the dark feathers but the neck and tail are really close to the edge of being blown.
Look forward to seeing more and please have a look at others images here and don't hesitate to comment.
Hi Colin, welcome to BPN. That's a fantastic action capture. In addition to John's comments, I'd like to ask if you used a post processing program to give the image a smoothed paint by numbers effect-Topaz Adjust and or Simplify come to mind looking at this. (Not a bad thing, just curious). Something which you couldn't control given the time of day is the contrast- the Eagle is almost lost on the water -a crop as John suggested might also help with that. Looking forward to more!
@John, Thanks for the comment, I really appeciate the feedback. I agree with the crop, but because of the framing of the shot, there is nothing left above the eagle to give more headroom. I'm still learning post-processing (I use LR 4) and am fairly comfortable doing the basics, but I struggle when things like the whites in this one get blown out. I aree, it is much better to have the bird flying towards you, but this one came from behind me down to the river at Conowingo and I was lucky to get the shots I got.
@Randall, most of the PP was in LR 4, but I have downloaded a demo of Topaz Adjust and used it in an attempt to get the whites under control.
I'm open to any suggestions for processing as well as composition. I've really gotten soewhat serious about photography over the last year or so and want to improve to where I am at least in the same ballpark as the images I see here.
Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate them. I agree with the cropping comments, unfortunately, due to the framing of this one, there is no room at the top above the eagle. I'm still learning post-processing (I use LR 4) and still have difficulties when the whites are blownout or overexposed compared to the rest of the image. On this on, I used Topaz adjust to try and get them less blown-out.
So, any suggestions for processing and composition, etc will be greatfully accepted.
Colin- I used a free form crop to balance the edges of the frame with the main components of the image. While not ideal, doing so does force the eye toward the subject.
Randall, Thanks - I like that better than my original crop. I tried to leave a little more room around the eagle initially so it wan't quite so centered in the frame. This may be one of the cases when a more even and ceter crop is best.
I'm going to go back and look at the processing and see if I can't get it a little more "natural" looking this evening.
Fishing Bald Eagle
Posting Permissions
