Mornings Glory

[Bytesback]

This morning, I went out to the valley surrounding our town with the idea of photographing some birds. I spent hours trekking all over our valley to no avail, seeing nothing more than common crows and magpies. I was disappointed to say the least, but finally decided to pack up and drive home. On the drive home, I saw a massive bald eagle sitting on a fence post, and immediately pulled over to try and get some photos, fully expecting that he would take flight as soon as my car came to a stop. This incredible eagle not only stayed put for several minutes, but also allowed me to get within 12-15 feet, at which point I backed off because he started flexing his talons and ruffling his feathers. I was able to take 235 shots of him, and have only edited a few so far. It was absolutely incredible, and the best morning I have had in a long time, so I have named him Mornings Glory

 

[WesternGuy]

You have a couple of nice shots here - it was very nice for the eagle to pose for you. You have, however, run into the proverbial problem of having photographed a dark subject, the bird, against a very light background and you camera's meter has betrayed you by overexposing the sky, which is okay, but the bird is underexposed. In these situations, dark bird against a light background, you would need to add an exposure compensation of somewhere between +1 and +2 stops to bring out the detail in the bird. Yes this would blow out the sky, but if you increase the size of your aperture so that none of the sky is in focus, then it will probably not matter. If you shot in raw, then you may be able to recover some of the detail in the feathers with a little bit of dodging using an adjustment brush or some similar tool, depending on the post-processing software you are using.

WesternGuy

 

[Bytesback]

Almost forgot, my adventure ended with a little humor!

Keep in mind that while I have lived in Montana for over 20 years, and seen these magnificent birds several times, I have never been this close to any bird of this size. I was intimidated to say the least, and was acutely aware of how easily he could dispatch me at any moment.

Now once I realized he was going to let me get pretty close, I had put my camera into shutter mode and jacked the shutter speed up with the intention of getting some cool "takeoff" photos when he finally had enough and leapt into the air. That WAS my intention.... However, what actually happened was slightly different:

I had started inching closer, hoping for some really cool profile shots of his head and of the blood stains on the feathers around his beak, presumably from his last meal. While I was doing this my heart was pounding away with excitement and more than a little fear that his next meal would be "scrawny photographer". When I got with in 10ft of him, he suddenly threw his wings out and leapt into the air. My immediate thought was NOT to take a picture, but rather that I was about to be bird dinner. So in an undaunted act of macho masculinity, I instead shrieked like a girl, fell on my butt, and rolled down the ditch I had been standing above. :blushing:
:blushing:
I have no doubt that he had a good laugh at my expense as he flew off, which I consider more than a fair trade for tolerating me for so long with the grace and nobility this bird is famed for!

 

[Bytesback]

WesternGuy- Thanks for the information! I am really new at this. I knew that the exposure was going to be a problem afteer shooting a few pictures, but wasn't entirely sure how to go about correcting it. As far as post processing, I only have Picasa. I intend to get lightroom sometime next month, but it will be awhile before I even learn how to use it

 

[WesternGuy]

WesternGuy- Thanks for the information! I am really new at this. I knew that the exposure was going to be a problem afteer shooting a few pictures, but wasn't entirely sure how to go about correcting it. As far as post processing, I only have Picasa. I intend to get lightroom sometime next month, but it will be awhile before I even learn how to use it

As far as learning Lightroom, there are a lot of ways to do it, just depending on how you learn best. Myself, I learn best from a book with examples that I can work through, or by watching a video and then trying to follow and copy what I learned in the video. You can check out this posting of mine on another forum for some ideas on sources of learning for Lightroom 5 - Learning LR 5 - Canon Digital Photography Forums . Scroll down a bit to see my posting. Hope this helps.

WesternGuy