Bald Eagle

[Dennis_Plank]

My first morning out in the Skagit Valley when I turned into the access road to the preserve where I shot the Rough-legged Hawk, I encountered this immature Bald Eagle on what looks like an apple tree in the back yard of the house on the corner. This was typical of the flats-almost any house with a tree or two had an eagle perched on one of them. The sky was still cloudy creating the high key background, but the tree wasn’t too tall so the angle wasn’t outrageously bad. This bird was so tame I was able to get out of the car, shoot over the roof, get back in,move the car and repeat.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

I did a touch of cloning on some branches entering the lower left-any evidence you can see?

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Does the composition work?

Any pertinent technical details:

7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 516 mm, beanbag on car roof, f/7.1, 1/500, iso 2000, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Noise reduction using Topaz AI Clear. Cropped from the sides-full height.

You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.

[Allen_Brooks]

Excellent detail and I feel the composition works well. The high key element lets the eagle stand out nicely.

[David_Bogener]

Excellent detail and DOF. I am not a fan of high key images, but this is quite nice.

[Shirley_Freeman]

Very nice capture, Dennis. I too am not a fan of high key, but it definitely makes him stand out well. I love his head position.

[S_Govindarajan]

The high key presentation works very well for this image with the darkish bird and branches, Dennis. I think your choice of composition is also very good. The only change I would experiment with is to include the entire right branch (cut-off in this composition), if you have that.

[Dennis_Plank]

I believe I have the rest of the right branch, Govind, but there were several other branches coming up from below that made a mess of it, so I decided to truncate it instead.