Juv eagle at Dungeness Landing

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Beautiful morning looking out across Dungeness Bay. Several eagles were active. Nearby nest’

Specific Feedback

Any advice is welcomed

Technical Details

Nikon Z6ii Hand held
Nikkor Z 100-400 with 1.4 TC
560mm
f8
ISO1600
1/1250sec
LRC masking and Topaz AI for DN and sharpening.

Hi Daniel, I like the upward wing position you caught in this image with the backwards glance of the eagle. Creates a nice tension for this shot. The sharpness and processing looks better in this image than previous to me. Looks like you are on the right track. Nice capture.

Thanks, Allen

Your eagle images keep getting better, Dan. I like this one. I would suggest using a good tripod since you have to be quite a distance from an eagle to get it all in the frame. Distance magnifies any camera movement and unless you have an extremely high shutter speed can reduce image quality slightly. With a perched bird like this a tripod can be your best friend (plus once you get in position, it does all the work of holding the camera and lens). One thing you might want to do on this image is play with the local adjustment brush in LR. You can use it to add a little brightness to the face and to selectively boost the saturation of the beak and eye to help make them pop a bit from the rest of the bird. Juvenile eagle eyes tend to get lost in the bird very easily so I’ll usually boost the brightness and saturation of their eyes a bit (not to the point of being gaudy).

A very nice job on this one.

Nice pose! The young ones around here are all flustered because their parents are busy working on nesting and eggs and they aren’t getting attention or food anymore. It’s kind of funny in a way.

Dennis has some great advice that I agree with - I’ve found that using a support like a monopod or tripod helps quite a bit. If money allows, a gimbal head is also great for having a lot of flexibility and balance holding that lens. You can move it very quickly as these guys zip around.

Hi Dan, You caught a nice pose and to me the detail looks good. I like that there are some clouds in the background to break up a monotonous blue sky. If this were mine, I’d probably crop some off the right and add more on the left-generally I like more room in the direction the bird is looking.

Hi Daniel
This is Eagle gave a nice reaction look. You might look to Topaz Sharpen AI to get a little more detail out of this big crop. All and all it looks like your are having fun photographing Eagle.
Peter