A fish eagle taking off with its meal, a tiger fish. These amazing areal predators are seen all over southern africa but there is one place that stand head and shoulders above the rest, where these birds thrive and can be seen and photographed to your hearts content and that is along the Chobe River, Botswana.
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 200-400 F4 VR II
1/2500 sec @ f5.6
ISO 1600
Exposure Bias -0.7
Light quality is topps. Light angle is perfect. Great details/sharp. Dig the splash and the catch.
Compositionally, a consideration would be rotate the image ccw to level the shoreline, trim just
a bit off the bottom, and add just a bit of canvas on top if you have it.
A very nice image Brendon, I like the subtle glow in the light that has brought out the colors in the bird and fish quite well, and the headroom that you have provided in front of the bird. The image has a lot of impact. However I have two points to make in addition to the unlevel horizon that could possibly make the image better: 1. the bird's eye and upper wing could do with more contrast / sharpness. 2. My eye went to the bird first, then the spash, then back to the bird - on coming back to the bird though the splash appeared to me like dirt on my monitor... somehow it's not helping with the current composition - the composition probably needs more balance to account for the partly occluded splash.
Brendon, lovely shot. Killer light and the eagle banked just so that there was no shadow. The wat droplets added more interest, wish that they were more visible. A bit more contrast on the eye would make this imAge even better. Well done!
Arial Predator
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