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African Red Faced Eagle
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
Rutland Falconry and Owl Centre near Oakham in the East of EnglandTime
Mid afternoonLighting
This was in a dark corner of the centre shaded by some trees, I saw the eagle sat at the back of its enclosure and as I watched it just stepped forward onto a perch into the light illuminating its face.Equipment
Canon 50D MkII, Canon L series 70-200m f2.8, no flash handheldInspiration
Nothing, it was a spur of the moment thing and the picture just leapt out at meEditing
Quite a bit of messing around with the exposure in Lightroom, the picture was underexposed because I had the camera set for centre weighted metering and the centre of the image was so much brighter than the birds body and the background. The colour was slightly washed out so I initially tried to simply increase the global saturation but discovered that the birds' plumage went blue as it reflected the blue sky so I settled for adding some pop to the colour selectively using Topaz plug in and a mask in photoshop. This is a simple trick I find useful when photographing my shiny black labrador!In my camera bag
Two bodies, Canon 5D and Canon 50D, 70-200mm L series lens, a 50mm f1.8 Canon lens and a 17-40mm f4 L series lens plus a polarising filter and some HD filters for landscape shots - I lug my trusty Manfretto tripod everywhere!Feedback
Sometimes luck plays more of a part than all the planning in the world, watch out for those spur of the moment shots and if something catches your eye simply snap it first then worry about setting the camera up properly for the second shot. There was no second shot here, the eagle immediately stepped back into the shadows. I knew my camera was set up incorrectly for this shot but I also knew I could fudge it given a bit of luck because I was shooting in raw with a middle of the road ISO that would give me a fast exposure, the f2.8 70-200mm lens helped a lot to frame the shot.