Eagle approaching nest

[Monte Brown]

This was taken during the June 2009 Alaska Bear Boat IPT with Artie.

1D Mark III
Canon 100-400 IS @400
1/800 f8
manual ISO 800

Comments appreciated

[Manjesh Lingamurthy]

Hi Monte

Beautiful shot. Great wing spread, nice head angle with good details in the highlights and shadow areas(may be a little loss of detail in the shadow area of the right wing). I think you should remove the nesting place in the right side of the frame by cropping, as it does not add anything to the image(the only way we know it is the nesting area, because you have it in your caption).

Manjesh

[James Boland]

Spectacular capture! I agree about removing the nest area.

[Monte Brown]

Thanks for the commets, my wife also thought the left side should be removed, wanted to see what other photographers thought.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Monte, Great timing and I know that the original was sharper than this JPEG. There were only a very few flashing pixels. I eliminated one by reducing the YELLOW SAT 10 points and cloned out the other two easily. Then I ran a 15% Linear Burn on the whites and burned the darker areas. There were some stong halos/pixelation around the head that I cloned out. Not sure where that came from... Lastly I sharpened the face and ran a 13% Gaussian blur on the cliff face. I think that there was a great image there for the taking with some improved post processing. Lat note: You only used half of the allowed pixels :)

[Monte Brown]

Artie,

I tried the blur but you did a much better job on feathering. Thanks for the feedback and improved post processing.

Monte

[Arthur Morris]

YAW most welcome Monte. No feathering. I just used a Quick Mask which comes with built in feathering. And just to think, Robert O'Toole is watching TV on my couch just six feet away. :)

[Wynand van Wyk]

Great in coming image captured! Ditto above.

[Randy Stout]

Monte:

One of your better images. I will take the contrarian viewpoint here, and say that for me the inclusion of the nest area on the left adds to the image. In fact, depending on what you have in the original, and how it looks, I might include even more. It gives the image some balance, and tells the story better, than just the eagle floating in air.

I love 'clean' images, but the context of the image is important, and unless the subject is just overpowering, it needs some context to really work for me. Doesn't need to be much, but some tie to the environment, surroundings, adds a lot for me. Just my personal bias.

Randy

[Bruce Enns]

Hi Monte, A nice eagle image, I agree with Artie's assessment that it could be improved by some changes to the post-processing. I very much agree with Randy that for this pose in particular, with the feet down, that more of an unblurred landing spot would really add to the image.

Thanks for posting!
Cheers!
Bruce

[Monte Brown]

Randy,

Thanks for the comments, I also feel it helps tell the story. That is all of the landing area in that particular shot, have another one that has more landing area around the nest.

[Arthur Morris]

More landing area added and then blurred would work for me :)