We saw this Snake Eagle while driving in Namibia (Africa), and we stopped the van and took this shot from the van. I did quite a bit of work on it to sharpen, brighten the eyes, get more detail, etc. The sky was a bland grey/white, so I added a sky (is that allowed here?).
Any feedback is welcome.
Fujifilm XT3, 70-300 lens w 1.4 extender, ISO 3200, 1/1000 at f/11
Roberta, what an amazing predatory avian this guy is. Nature sure has a way of making it’s levels of hierarchy apparent at times and this creature has that obvious profile about it… 
Sorry I cannot comment on the “legality” if you will on the sky change or addition. But it appears to be natural in the processing overall… 
Nice view of the talons, Roberta, and a great stare.
I’m actually wondering whether you have a juvenile Martial Eagle here. Looks a lot like some I’ve seen, it’s got the right beak and talon size, and the crest is starting to come in.
Wow Roberta, what a glorious shot of this beautiful creature. The pose you captured shows the power in this Eagle. I love he/she is starring right at you and those sharp talons really stand out. Very nice! You can replace skies. It’s only asked that you let the viewers know that it was replaced.
Very nice! The sky is a nice feature but you might deal with the blown-out highlight area.
I don’t know what technique you used to add the sky, but it looks like a good job with one caveat: zooming in, there is a big difference in the noise in the bird/perch and the sky, and the noise on the bird carries over to a halo area around it. Should be possible to denoise the bird layer.
Hi Roberta,
I really appreciate this because I’ve never seen one before.
The sky replacement looks natural to me, I have a habit of looking close at images before I read the technical stuff or the back story if there is one and it didn’t strike me as odd looking, well done IMHO. Thank you for mentioning it though!
My thoughts on things like replacing the sky is pretty simple, if the scene was meant to be a document, nothing should be done except for color and exposure correction. Everything else has an artistic purpose meant to stir up some kind of emotion in the viewer.
Anyway, this really is a powerful and majestic looking hunter!
And you done very well with the capture of it as well as the edit!
My only suggestion is to adjust the placement of the bird in the frame, I would consider cropping off from the right, if it’s body were facing the other way, it would work better but since that’s not possible or practical, try cropping in from the right to balance it out more.
If you have the original file of the clouds, you could add some canvas on the left for breathing room if you want but that part isn’t really needed in my opinion.
Either way, I like it and I’m happy that I got to see it. 
Thanks again!
All the best,
