Slow time of year. Cold enough that all the lakes are frozen over. No ducks. There were a few eagles at the Mississippi lock and dams, but every time I could get there
it was overcast and the Army Corps of Engineers had the gates open on the inaccessible opposite side of the river. I've resorted to reviewing older images. I took this image
July 2017. I was surprised it came out as well as it did. I was just setting my tripod down first thing in the morning around a brush pile in the middle of a field. This bird
landed maybe 12 ft in front me before I could even check exposure settings. I hit the AF and wheeled the shutter speed down(easiest thing to adjust) as far as I could while
firing off a few frame before the bird bolted. I wasn't very confident about what I going to recover as the image was quite dark on the camera. The iso was set at 400 from the
previous day. I had to bump the exposure +2 in Adobe Camera Raw. I guess that means it was two stops underexposed? I did apply fairly heavy Topaz DeNoise to the
background but the bird had a lot less noise than I was expecting. Full frame image. I might have gotten a little carried away with sharpening for posting. Manual mode.
1/320s, f8, iso400
D500, 500mmF4VRII, TC-14EIII