Eagle checking out his catch

[Bruce McKee]

I photographed Eagles the first week of January at Lock and Dam 14 on the Mississippi River at LeClaire, IA (near Davenport). This was one of my favorite of the day of the Eagle looking at the fish that he just caught (even though the highlights on the head are blown out a bit). Another photographer had thrown a frozen fish in the river to attract the eagles in closer, which is the practice at this location.
7D, 500mm f/4 IS, ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/1600, PP with DPP and PSE, 50% crop

[Alan Murphy]

Great action. Light looks contrasty with the whites in the head a little cooked.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like how the eagle is checking out his catch, you had good light too. I agree the whites are overexposed.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Well caught, for me the image is a super pose but I suspect you might be able to improve the processing a little, it looks too contrasting to me and also as you said the whites are blown.
If you used DPP I suggest go to raw file and using tools see the histogram, revert everything to as shot then see if you can tame the whites by pulling down the top of the histogram i.e. the top line forming the frame of the histogram- don't use the brightness slider, then adjust the image as you see fit.

[Bruce McKee]

Thanks for the comments. I'm not quite sure why the contrast looks so high. I have tried processing it with Cannon DPP (as Arash recommends) and PSE as I indicated above and also with LR4 on a different attempt. It does not look as contrasty on the monitor while editing but after I convert to .jpg and upload the contrast increases on the same monitor. I'll take closer look at my workflow to see what might be the cause. Jonathon, thanks for the tip on pulling down the top of the histogram. I'll try that also.
- Bruce