Bald eagle

[gail bisson]

I have lots and lots of BE flight images but I have never been really happy with any of my perched images. Always too high, perch is ugly, poor light. poor pose etc etc.
Anyway, I finally got an image I am happy with. Nice perch, great light and a good HA.
I am also using a new watermark that I purchased from Photologo. What do you think?
Canon 1 DX
600mm and 1.4 x ISO 640 SS 1/2000 F 7.1
Cloned out a bit of whitewash on the perch and one stem to left of frame. Crop to ~80% FF. Had to do a bit of color balance to reduce the yellows.
Comments and critiques always appreciated and learned from with thanks,
Gail

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Gail, well everything certainly came together here. Super pose and HA, and the feather detail stands out. The BE is sharp from top to toe, with DOF throughout the image. I like the funky piece of wood/perch infront of the BE, and the placement of the BE fits perfectly. This looks like early light, but as I am not too familiar with these guys, are their feathers this colour, or is it due to the sweet light you had.

I quite like your signature too.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Looks beautiful Gail, I like the elegant copyright too!

[Juan Tolentino]

Hi Gail, gorgeous image, love everything about it, HA, light, pose, background, point of view, etc, etc...one of the best bald eagle image that I’ve ever seen. Thank you for sharing this beauty and the signature looks great too.


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[annmpacheco]

Gail, superb, BE sets a "mood" and he has excellent taste in perch's... I like the feathers not being "perfect" here and the BG is superb. I also like the small branch on the left. Your new logo loos glamorous dahlin! wall hanger! One other thing to add and ask, I am venturing into "color balance", and the color casts... any suggestions from anyone how they would learn this process... Thanks

[Isaac Grant]

All came together here Gail. Eagle looks really good and I like the perch including the little twig on the left. Being super picky I do wish that the light was at your back and not from the side so you wouldn't have that large shadow on the stump. Signature is elegant and matches your photos perfectly.

[David Salem]

Looks great Gail!! Love the nice pose and the cool looking perch. Details and exposure look spot on too. Well done.
Oh forgot to mention, love the new Sig!!

[gail bisson]

The first thing is to be able "to see" the color cast and, unfortunately, no one can teach you that. My eyes detect magenta casts and cyan casts instantly but I am not so good with yellow and blue.
When I do see a cast(I select the area that needs the cast fixed) I always go to Photoshop and go into Color balance first. There you will see three sliders and adjust accordingly. Make sure you tick the correct tone ie. shadows, midtones or highlight. If you have a cyan cast then move slider away from cyan by 1 or 2 or 10 points. Use whatever you need to correct the cast. Sometimes, you also have to move one of the other sliders .The point here, is PLAY and PLAY and PLAY with the sliders. Move them all the way up and all the way down so you can really see what is happening and then your eye can "see" the slight changes that occur with moving the slider 1 or 3 points.
If color balance doesn't work, then I will try Selective Color. In this BE image, the sky had a cyan cast so I chose the "cyan" box and moved the cyan slider down and the blacks up. Again, PLAY and PLAY and PLAY with the sliders.
At this point, 99% of the time I have fixed the cast but...with this image I still was not happy with the sky color as I remembered it in the viewfinder, so I went to photofilter and tried the cooling filter at an opacity of 5 % (the default is 25 which is too much )and I played with the opacity and when I got to 5% opacity, the sky color was perfect!
I have only used the cooling/warming filters 3 or 4 times but always good to have this ACE up your sleeve.
Hope this helps,
Gail

Gail, superb, BE sets a "mood" and he has excellent taste in perch's... I like the feathers not being "perfect" here and the BG is superb. I also like the small branch on the left. Your new logo loos glamorous dahlin! wall hanger! One other thing to add and ask, I am venturing into "color balance", and the color casts... any suggestions from anyone how they would learn this process... Thanks

[Bill Dix]

It all fell into place nicely: light, pose, perch, bg. And your comp leaves the perfect spot to show off you new logo. Very well done.

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice perch and details, I only wish you had a better BG to go with the perch , the transition between blue and brown which has coincided with the perch makes it a bit distracting plus the shadow on the stump... wish it wasn't there

If you go to BC you can find many great opportunities north of Vancouver half way towards whistler, the eagles perch low with great BG's and perches.

TFS