Eagle roost

[Ben Egbert]

I have been rebuilding my SmugMug gallery and reprocessing my images from scratch using some of the things I have learned here. This was taken at Lake Coeur d’Alene in Jan. 2007 with my 5D, 500f4 and 1.4X ISO200 and 1/200 sec from a Wimberly Sidekick.

I was fairly close so this is not a large crop. It was shot horizontal and cropped vertically. There was a main trunk extending in front of the bird. I cropped it back to the intersection with the branch and tried to give it a natural looking termination. I also considered cropping about ½ inch into the image to eliminate the juncture. I would like opinions. I want to show this at club. It prints nicely to 16x20.

I believe the main flaw in this image is that the light direction is not directly behind my back. But this is about as good as it gets at this roosting tree.

[Doug Brown]

Sharpness is excellent Ben. Even though your subject is side/backlit, there is reasonable detail in the darks. I find the perch a little too bright and would tone it down a bit. I also would like the bird a little higher in the frame.

[Ben Egbert]

Sharpness is excellent Ben. Even though your subject is side/backlit, there is reasonable detail in the darks. I find the perch a little too bright and would tone it down a bit. I also would like the bird a little higher in the frame.

Thanks Doug, good suggestions, how about I crop off some top? Or do I need more at the bottom? Rats, that would be a total remake. But what the heck, well worth it.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

As Doug mentioned beautiful detail even though there is side lighting. Love the pose and good eye contact. I like it as posted but cropping a tad from the top would bring the subject into view even more. Lovely capture Ben.

[Ben Egbert]

As Doug mentioned beautiful detail even though there is side lighting. Love the pose and good eye contact. I like it as posted but cropping a tad from the top would bring the subject into view even more. Lovely capture Ben.

Thanks for your coments. I am thinking I would like to go to a 4/5 aspect ratio, so maybe a tighter crop that takes a bit off the top and right side and eliminate that juncture of the limb. I still get more right and top space than bottom left.

Cropping is still coming hard to me.

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

beautiful pose,light!

[Ben Egbert]

Here is the crop I propose, is it too tight? I also darkened the perch.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The repost looks better, maybe just a bit tight. I like the sharpness and eye contact. Adjusting curves can help out quite well to even out the highlights and shadows. I think you already did a good job with the exposure control.

[Harshad Barve]

beautiful pose and sharpness here , repost looks better to me
TFS

[Arthur Morris]

I too prefer the repost. My big problem is with the light angle. You state that this light angle is "as good as it gets" at this location. Why?

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Axel and Harshad and Mano for your comments.

[Ben Egbert]

I too prefer the repost. My big problem is with the light angle. You state that this light angle is "as good as it gets" at this location. Why?

Well the lake is surrounded by mountains for one thing, so we don't get any light here until 10:30 or so in Dec, Jan. This tree is on the side of a bank that slopes south into the lake and that is too steep to move further south. Fact is, I have been shooting this tree since the early 80's. It is reliable for eagles, but not for light. Even If I could get down the bank, I would have a very steep shooting angle as I would be at least 30 feet lower. There are also trees in the way.

This could be a good late afternoon location, but then there is lots of background clutter. (Edit), actually this is the reverse problem I would be shooting southeast with a sun from the south west.

The eagles are usually either on the north or east side of the lake. In winter, the sun is almost always in the south. Sometimes the best light is when it is slightly overcast (I showed one of these a few weeks back). I can go to the east side and have the sun at my back and the lake in front, and I do this for feeding shots. But this does not work for roost shots. Also, the sun on the east side is after 11:00 or so and fairly harsh by then.

The salmon spawn has been failing the last two years. We used to get 150 or more eagles from Mid Dec until Feb, but as the spawn dies, the number of eagles drop as well.

For anyone local, this is Higgens Point, about 100 yard east of his statue.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Loved the details and pose, repost looks good, congrats..

[Stu Bowie]

The light has brought out excellent feather detail, and nice and sharp too. Good eye contact, agree this is a bit tight at the bottom and left.

[Arthur Morris]

Well the lake is surrounded by mountains for one thing, so we don't get any light here until 10:30 or so in Dec, Jan. This tree is on the side of a bank that slopes south into the lake and that is too steep to move further south. Fact is, I have been shooting this tree since the early 80's. It is reliable for eagles, but not for light. Even If I could get down the bank, I would have a very steep shooting angle as I would be at least 30 feet lower. There are also trees in the way.

This could be a good late afternoon location, but then there is lots of background clutter. (Edit), actually this is the reverse problem I would be shooting southeast with a sun from the south west.

The eagles are usually either on the north or east side of the lake. In winter, the sun is almost always in the south. Sometimes the best light is when it is slightly overcast (I showed one of these a few weeks back). I can go to the east side and have the sun at my back and the lake in front, and I do this for feeding shots. But this does not work for roost shots. Also, the sun on the east side is after 11:00 or so and fairly harsh by then.

The salmon spawn has been failing the last two years. We used to get 150 or more eagles from Mid Dec until Feb, but as the spawn dies, the number of eagles drop as well.

For anyone local, this is Higgens Point, about 100 yard east of his statue.

Thanks for the info. You can do some great stuff on cloudy days with eagles.

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks for the info. You can do some great stuff on cloudy days with eagles.

Thanks Artie, I will be over there in about 2-3 weeks for this seasons eagles. Each year is a bit different and sometimes we get surprises. This may be my last year for decent hand held flight stuff, planning to use my 50D and 500f4 without extender.

Question for you. I choose this eagle because it is super sharp and a light crop on a FF 12mpix camera. It will print large and probably do well at club where the judges are far less exacting. But I have others I could show with better light albiet more crop. Do you think the front shadow on this is bad enough that it should not be shown?

I am not in this competion stuff for prizes, but mostly to get critique and improvement.

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Kiran and Stuart. I will consider a recrop. I have material to work with, but not on the cloned out version so it means starting from scratch. Not a particually hard job, and this was a fairly easy to process image.