Bald Eagle Portraits

[Cantab]

Christina, one solution might be to shoot the eagle with several different exposures -- bracket exposures. But that would work only if the eagle stays around long enough for a variety of shots. But I think I recall from one of Joe's posts that with his (and your?) Nikon, it's easy to keep your finger on the exposure compensation dial for rapid adjustments.

[Brownbear]

Hi Bruce,

I think that would be very challenging to do, even though yes it is easy to keep my finger on the exposure compensation dial, capturing the bird in flight is enough of a challenge for me right now.

Aside.. Joe did confirm that I processed my eagle upping the exposure as much as possible without over processing so I will just continue on my quest to capture one in flight in the wild.

[Cantab]

Here are two more eagle portraits, both uncropped. I went back and checked the original images on the memory card; these two and a few others were slightly underexposed and with no blinkies. I processed them in LR, following most of Joe's advice. I adjusted the global exposure so the background looks okay. However, I pulled back the highlight slider a bit before using the adjustment brush to reduce the exposure near the top of the eagle's head where the feathers were brightest.







One of these is a very similar photo to the first one in my original post. That very first photo also had no blinkies in the camera but I did not use the adjustment brush on it to help calm down some still very bright feathers.

What do people think?

[Brownbear]

What do people think? Wow!

Beautiful photos Bruce... Gorgeous detail and colour... #2 is my favourite for the eye of the eagle is beautifully clear and for the position of the bird.

The only editing things I can think of are I can see a wee line of brightness on the top of the eagles head and that perhaps the area between the eagles eye and beak is a bit dark, but that is nit picking for beyond absolute perfection, and I think these are perfect!

[jprzybyla]

Hello Bruce, the eagles in you most recent post look good. Beautiful bird, so majestic. As Christina mentioned there might be a slight hot spot on the top of the head above the eye extending backwards. The only way you will know if it looks better is to tone it down and see. I would use the Adjustment Brush set to Burn which lowers exposure by 1/3 stop, then evaluate afterwards.