Getting in on the eagle fun

kdog

A Hudson River, NY eagle. I've seen them, but this is the first one I've managed to capture. Ya'll have raised the bar pretty high in this forum, but I decided to post this shot anyway because it's pretty good for me.



Critiques are certainly welcome.

saurora

Any eagle shot is a shot to be proud of!!! Nice job! I haven't spotted one in my area yet....still looking around for an accessible site.

dallas

kdog wrote:

A Hudson River, NY eagle. I've seen them, but this is the first one I've managed to capture. Ya'll have raised the bar pretty high in this forum, but I decided to post this shot anyway because it's pretty good for me.



Critiques are certainly welcome.

You have a very, very, beautiful capture. Keep sending in more.....

kdog

saurora wrote:

Any eagle shot is a shot to be proud of!!! Nice job! I haven't spotted one in my area yet....still looking around for an accessible site.

Thanks Saurora, that's very kind.

-joel

traunerk

Hey, K - Great catch...
certainly better than any eagle of mine (and I've tried at least three or four times this year) - glad you finally spotted one - they're great to watch...

regards...Keith

PS - where did you shoot this one from?

kdog

dallas wrote:

You have a very, very, beautiful capture. Keep sending in more.....

Thanks William,
Coming from you, that's high praise indeed.

After seeing your pictures, I won't be happy until I can see the wrinkles on his feet.

-joel

dallas

kdog wrote:

Thanks William,
Coming from you, that's high praise indeed.

After seeing your pictures, I won't be happy until I can see the wrinkles on his feet.

-joel

I appreciate your compliment Joel, and I'll be looking forward to your post when you sends us one with wrinkles on his feet, and a twinkle in his eye. : :

kdog

traunerk wrote:

certainly better than any eagle of mine (and I've tried at least three or four times this year) - glad you finally spotted one - they're great to watch...

regards...Keith

PS - where did you shoot this one from?

Thanks, Keith!

This was down along the river in Tomkins Cove, about a mile from my home. I spotted him there a week ago and took a bunch of shots then, but discovered later I'd forgotten to insert a memory card. :cry (Yes, I've since disabled no-CF shooting.) I'm definitely going back.

Say, where did you get those great Harrier and Red-Tail shots?

-joel

Thusie

Fien eagle shot! Way to go

kdog

Thusie wrote:

Fien eagle shot! Way to go

Thank you, Thusie. :andy

Harryb

Good eagle capture. They are real tough to expose for. You have a bit of a blowout on the eagle's head. Still a fine capture.

Rohirrim

Nice Job, Kdog. Nice in flight shot.

kdog

Harryb wrote:

Good eagle capture. They are real tough to expose for. You have a bit of a blowout on the eagle's head. Still a fine capture.

Thanks, Harry. Yes, the exposure is a real dilemma as I've discovered. To much, and you blow out the head. Too little, and the black body loses the detail. I used EC +1.0 on this shot because I figured I was shooting a black bird against a bright sky. I guess next time I'll just shoot 'er neutral. It's probably better to preserve the white head detail I suppose.

-joel

kdog

Rohirrim wrote:

Nice Job, Kdog. Nice in flight shot.

Thank you, Steve. I'm truly honored to have all the big-boys weighing in.

I took another run at the processing on the shot, and dialed back the exposure a full stop. I didn't noise filter this one, so didn't lose any detail, but now the background is noisy. It's only ISO400, so I'm don't know what the issue is there.

Rohirrim

Looks like you've recovered some of the highlights, but if they are completley blown out at the time of exposure you probably can't recover all of them. Still a very nice capture though.

For the noise you might try one or more of the following:

• If your in RGB run the noise filter on only the channel (s) that have the moist noise in them
• Better yet if your in LAB mode run the noise filter on the a and or b channel
• Also if you do a selective sharpening on the bird you won't increase the effects that sharpening has on the blue sky
• You could also select the sky only and do a Gaussian Blur on it
• Experiment a bit. Each image often requires a differant approach.

Hope that made sense.

kdog

Steve, that all made a LOT of sense. Great tips.

Thank you very much.

-joel

kdog

Steve,

Here's a version with selective sharpening, per your tutorial. Yours is the first tutorial with layers that has actually worked for me. Very well done. I've got a lot to learn, but this is very encouraging. Thanks so much.

-joel

traunerk

re: shots...
The harrier was on the top of the landfill at croton point. The red tail was just off the road near my office in short hills, new jersey. You takes em where you can

regards...keith

kdog wrote:

Thanks, Keith!

This was down along the river in Tomkins Cove, about a mile from my home. I spotted him there a week ago and took a bunch of shots then, but discovered later I'd forgotten to insert a memory card. :cry (Yes, I've since disabled no-CF shooting.) I'm definitely going back.

Say, where did you get those great Harrier and Red-Tail shots?

-joel

Rohirrim

kdog wrote:

Steve,

Here's a version with selective sharpening, per your tutorial. Yours is the first tutorial with layers that has actually worked for me. Very well done. I've got a lot to learn, but this is very encouraging. Thanks so much.

-joel

Thats cool. Glad it worked for you. The image looks great too!

Osprey Whisperer

Well done Joel.

kdog

Bird Man Photographer wrote:

Well done Joel.

Thank you, sir!