I had the joy to see this Golden Eagle, who is being rehabilitated in a eco center near my place. Funilly enough they say these bird end up considering themselves as humans too, which basically means you can get snapped if you get too close as they consider you the same specie.
The light was golden on a moderately cold winter day, although a bit too much on the right side, but his feathers and all the variations of colors in them are mind boggling. I managed to get a good BG by placing the trees at the right angle.
Shot was taken at 500mm at F/5.6 and 1/250sec in manual exp, ISO 500, with tripod, Pentax K-7 and Sigma 500/4.5. Did further (but slight) PP in LR, including some sharpening and curve adjustment. I also did some iris highlight, since its eye was in the shadow because of light direction and I could not move anymore. Litlle/no Crop.
Thanks ;-)
Last edited by Stephane Neron; 01-16-2011 at 01:06 PM.
Interesting expression on the bird Stephane. I image he/she was turning back to preen.
I like the portrait and especially the eye, even though it's not completely open. Composition is good- nice and tight which is appropriate for intimate portraits like this. There are a couple of things that jump out- there seems to be a bit of a colour cast in the image on my monitor. It's difficult to diagnose because neutral tones are few and far between on the image. It looks a bit blue and magenta to me. I would run one more round of sharpening on the image and remove the little white speck by the beak.
Thanks for your input... I'll give a shot at fixing the color cast, speckle and try to sherpen it a little more. Not sure if sharpening it will be too much. I usually apply 45, 1, 45 sharpening in LR. However sometimes if I run NR first, then I can't apply sharpening as much. I'll try a couple things. Maybe no NR and more sharpening will give it a more natural look.
Here's what I was able to do, starting back directly from the raw file: fixing the speckle, the white balance and increasing the Sharpening in LR3 to 62 amount, 1.0 radius, 56 detail. Also includes slight Iris enhancement, "Punch Setting" in LR, and some curve adj.
Somehow, I thought I'd be able to get sharper details, but that's about as far as I'll let it go.... I swear it's not a painting! :-)
Golden Eagle
