Winters bring eagles down from the frozen north to the Mississippi River in search of open water. The locals take it for granted. As a transplant from “back east”, it makes the winters bearable.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
I would consider this a 2.5-3 out of 5. I’m struggling with DOF while learning the nuances of a Nikon Z7 auto-focus. Editing in Lightroom continues to be an ongoing learning “process.”
Thanks for posting your eagle. The flight position is good with a nice wing position with a relatively nice background.
Your shutter speed was certainly fast enough for an eagle in flight and overall settings seem appropriate. The whites in the head aren’t showing the level of detail that they should based on the exposure. Maybe you have room in the RAW file to bring down the whites/highlights in LR Develop.
You mentioned you are struggling with DOF. Not quite sure what you mean by that here. The biggest issue with the image is the eagle isn’t sharp. That is not a DOF issue with this issue, it is a missed focus issue. The birds left wing is the sharpest part of the image, and it’s not quite there either, so I’m not sure I understand the question on DOF.
The background is not bad, but competes a little with the subject a bit more separation in tonal ranges makes the eagle more prominent.
For this quick edit, I tried to bring down the whites, but didn’t get a good result, I darkened the background and softened it just a bit with negative texture.
Hi Charlie
Any day you get to photograph Eagles is a good day. The framing is nice. On the DOF question, maybe it’s more of focus point setting than DOF. ( eye tracking, signal point or multi point)? It can be hard to track a bird at 850mm.
Than you for the photograph.
Peter
