Quite the pair

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
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Quite the pair
Quite the pair1500×1000 940 KB

It’s funny how life can give you a dope slap now and again. After a few years of paddling the Spirit river here in northern Wisconsin (where it’s currently 25 below zero) and finding and photographing a few eagles there, I finally noticed a nest. I’d only paddled by it 5 or 6 times and it’s only 10 feet across. Doh!

The day I noticed it the kids were in it - a pair of young ones just about to fledge. I parked the kayak in some water plants and waited for the parents to return. I’d seen them whizzing around in the area, but after 45 minutes the light was going and I headed home. After looking at the images in Lr, I decided I needed a better lens and bought one.

A couple of months later I went back and on my way back downstream I ran into one of the adults in “the eagle tree” (there’s usually one parked in it). It flew off downriver and I had a pretty good idea where it was headed. Sure enough, it was in the other “eagle tree” - this one is directly across from the nest.

When I got the boat around the line of trees it was in, I could see the nest was empty, but I could hear the kids and eventually found them in another tree (and blocked by branches so no photos). But then the other adult flew into the area and the two of them landed on that branch above. Never before have I been able to get a pair together and I was so excited. I’ll shut up now and let you get on with the critique, but prepare to see more of these guys and maybe some from another nest on another river that I love to paddle.

Oh and the male is in the back, the female in front. They are the larger of the two genders in this species.

Specific Feedback Requested

I am a bird and wildlife photography NOVICE. I get lucky every now and again, but I want to be better prepared for my next shoot. So…thoughts about this image? How could it be improved? Is it too static? It’s the only one with movement with both faces in view. Does the world need more pictures of bald eagles?

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Panasonic DC-G9
LEICA DG 100-400mm F4.0-6.3
400.0 mm (800.0 mm in 35mm)
f/6.3 | 1/640 sec | ISO 800
Wildlife photography custom mode - shutter priority, auto ISO, animal recognition, Cont. AF, Dual IS - I think that’s it for special features, anything else I should dial in?

Handheld (elbows braced on knees, kayak in a patch of plants for stability, winds relatively calm)

Edited in Lr for clarity and sharpness & NR. I think the crop also straightened since I think I tilted pretty badly.

2 Likes
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Hello Kristen. I like how both birds are sharp in the photo. The green pine background helps them stand out well. The raised foot of the right eagle is a nice touch. I don’t know where the Spirit River is but I love the Wisconsin North Woods. Beautiful capture and thank you for sharing. Eleven below zero here now about 50 miles southwest of Chicago.

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Thanks @Brian_Murphy - I think winter has finally caught up with the upper midwest. After such an easy time of it so far, it’s about time. We finally got snow enough to play in, but it’s too cold to go out!

The Spirit is runs from west of Tomahawk into the Wisconsin in town. It’s a great place to paddle.

Not all the shots of them have both faces sharp, so that was something I knew was important so those are in the bin.

1 Like
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All I have to say is, how lucky are you!? To get to be so close to these birds and a nest. That’s going to be so awesome to maybe get to see the little ones grow up and be trained by mom and dad, which I’ve read can be pretty awesome to observe! It’s true, there are enough eagle pictures in the world but I think this one has a uniqueness to it. I could see it in a birders guide maybe for that area?

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Thanks @Vanessa_Hill - the Wisconsin River valley is dirty with eagles. We have a local pair that I see all year round and we’ve got an “eagle tree” in the backyard on the edge of the river that they like. There’s another pair with a territory a couple miles downstream and I’ve seen the adults and their kids, too, but not the nests of either pair. Luckily I know of 3 nests and 2 are about a 25 minute drive to the kayak launch and then short paddles to reach. Plenty of eagle action and I’ll do my best to find them doing interesting things.

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Very nice photo of the pair. Good to see that you got both out in the open and on a nice perch. Nice poses of each of them as well. Perhaps a bit tight on bottom and maybe the top. But other wise they look good. Looking forward to seeing some more eagle photos.

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Welcome, Kristen. This is a very nice first post. The poses of the two eagles work well together and they’re both nice and sharp and well exposed. That can be tough because those white heads are very easy to overexpose. If you’re going to try photographing them doing interesting things, like fishing or against the sky, you might want to explore your camera’s manual exposure setting. The automatics can get seriously fooled as the subject moves in front of different backgrounds (it’s trying to keep the average area being metered a middle exposure, so it it goes from a dark background to a bright background it will change the exposure-even though the exposure of the bird itself doesn’t need to be changed).

I agree with David that a little looser composition would be nice. It’s normal to want to make your subjects fill the frame, but it can start to make it feel like they’re in a cage.

It’s so great that you have so many eagles. Growing up in Michigan in the 50’s-60’s there were none. I was an adult on the west coast before I saw my first one.

Welcome again, and I look forward to seeing a lot more.

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Thanks @Dennis_Plank - I think you’re right about using a manual approach with the birds moving. I usually shoot manual when I know that I want the same exposure (more or less) over the course of a day in an area, so I think it would work well here, too. Thanks for the advice.

The tight crop is because I was tilted badly and had to fix it with the birds relatively low in the frame. So here’s another shot of them, this time they are more centered and I didn’t tilt so much.

Kristen_SmithSeptember 16, 2020P1042092
Kristen_SmithSeptember 16, 2020P10420921500×1125 1.06 MB

He did a funny little squirm to get a better fix on my friend coming in closer with her kayak. They didn’t spook until I stupidly dropped my lens hood in the bottom of the boat. But they didn’t go far -

Kristen_SmithSeptember 16, 2020P1042135
Kristen_SmithSeptember 16, 2020P10421353000×1875 2.34 MB

That is a branch in the same tree as the nest - a little below it. The backlighting was tough with them in the shade, but I managed. Aren’t they great? I was so happy they put up with me and my friend for so long. We watched until they flew off for dinner.

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Both of these follow-on images are nice, Kris. The last looks like a nice shallow angle and I like the 190 degree head turn of the bird on our right.

1 Like