Yesterday was a banner year for me at Conowingo. After a day of cold rain, the eagles were hungry, the generators were running and several spillways were open. There were many eagles catching and carrying fish! The problem was getting enough shutter speed to freeze the action. First of all there was fog over the water and the sky had thin clouds. All of that conspired to make it difficult to capture all the action. But in this image I was panning with the 300-800 Sigma lens at 750 mm with the Nikon D300 and a full Wimberly head on tripod. The shutter speed was only 1/250 second! This image was slightly cropped from the original. Other techs: f 6.3, Aperture priority with EC +1, ISO 800, 750 mm. Levels, curves, increase in brightness and contrast as well as some noise reduction with Topaz Denoise and sharpening were used to improve the RAW image.
In this image I particularly like the blurring of the wings which indicate the power of the wing stroke of the eagle and the water droplets coming from the fish.
I like the soft light, angle, eye contact, BG and the panning works really well here. I might sharpen the talons, fish and head a bit more and run NR on the BG and the underside of the near wing.
I think that Axel's comments and suggestions are as usual accurate and helpful.
Beyond that, I find it really interesting that the central elements of the image are sharp despite the fact that the lens was at 750 mm, the lens lacked image stabilization, and the shutter speed was only 1/250 sec. Under the circumstances, only very careful and accurate panning and tracking of this swiftly moving bird could have produced this result. Well done!
I also think that the soft pastels in the background sky complement the central image.
Linda, I really like this. The wing blur adds to the sense of motion and the BG has a slight painterly look to it. Agree a bit more sharpening as Axel mentioned, but this is a very visually pleasing image! Congrats!!
Not much to add here but I like this one very much. As humans we tend to focus our sight on the eye and face of our subject, well in this case that's what I'm doing and that gives me the feel as the rest is fine, the extra motion on wings and fish plays an important role here since that adds drama to the image. Sharpening has been mentioned, but I would just apply it on face if it were mine.