Bald Eagle + Grey Skies = ???

[dupcak]

Hi,

A general question and then a request for "brutal" critique.

Q: Lets pretend the photo below is "acceptably good" ignoring the sky, what do you do with this sort of photo when all you have to play with is plain old grey skies? No texture, no clouds, etc. Do you toss it? Do you keep it but never show it to anyone? Replace the sky? Keep it until you get a better one?

So now for the critique. Please critique and be as honest as possible - I really will NOT be offended - I have very thick skin and would rather learn and improve than receive praise. I had about 30 minutes on Thanksgiving to run out and grab some shots before the family got too suspicious. I plan to get more time with this nesting pair of bald eagles and hopefully the weather will cooperate and I'll be able to spend more time with them in the future.

Some questions for critique (feel free to add your own thoughts on other items):

• I boosted the shadows on the bird - did I overdo it?
• I didn't remove the branches in the lower right since I kinda liked the diagonal of the leading edge of the eagle kinda matching the diagonal of the branches. Should I have removed or are they additive to the photo?

- Rob

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[Nimi]

Like it as is. Sure you can photoshop clouds, color, rising moon, spaceship, whatever, but it's good as is imo.

 

[dupcak]

Like it as is. Sure you can photoshop clouds, color, rising moon, spaceship, whatever, but it's good as is imo.

Thanks - I'm definitely not a fan of sky replacement in wildlife photos, but really wasn't sure if plain grey would work.

 

[Nimi]

Thanks - I'm definitely not a fan of sky replacement in wildlife photos, but really wasn't sure if plain grey would work.

Such a majestic bird, doesn't need a backdrop.

 

[Charles Loy]

Great photo, stop messing with it

 

[Woody Meristem]

If it was plain gray, it was plain gray -- please don't change it. For what it's worth, in my opinion it's a very good photograph. If it was mine I'd keep it and not hesitate to show it to anyone.

 

[coachjohn57]

I wouldn’t touch a thing…nice capture!

 

[BAL Land]

If it was plain gray, it was plain gray -- please don't change it. For what it's worth, in my opinion it's a very good photograph. If it was mine I'd keep it and not hesitate to show it to anyone.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is how the beautiful bird appeared in the wild, and the point of bird photography (in my opinion) is to document as naturally as possible the birds in their environment.

 

[dupcak]

Such a majestic bird, doesn't need a backdrop.

Great photo, stop messing with it

If it was plain gray, it was plain gray -- please don't change it. For what it's worth, in my opinion it's a very good photograph. If it was mine I'd keep it and not hesitate to show it to anyone.

I wouldn’t touch a thing…nice capture!

Thanks all - glad to know it's a keeper I think I really need to stop comparing myself against all the over-edited social media posts.

 

[dupcak]

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is how the beautiful bird appeared in the wild, and the point of bird photography (in my opinion) is to document as naturally as possible the birds in their environment.

Thanks for the confirmation. I'm still ramping up on this bird photography stuff - and having a blast while doing it.

 

[Nimi]

Thanks all - glad to know it's a keeper I think I really need to stop comparing myself against all the over-edited social media posts.

Editing photos is like drinking cheap tequila; you got to know when to stop.

 

[JoelKlein]

Thank you for posting it and asking the question. It gave me courage as well. I’m having a hard time matrix metering eagles. I get them underexposed. I see your settings you’re exposure bias is + .7
Is that the trick?

 

[dupcak]

Thank you for posting it and asking the question. It gave me courage as well. I’m having a hard time matrix metering eagles. I get them underexposed. I see your settings you’re exposure bias is + .7
Is that the trick?

So there were a few things going on to try to get the exposure right and in the end I didn't quite nail it in the camera so I had to handle it in post processing.

• The sky was very bright (essentially white) and even with matrix metering I knew the camera was going to underexpose the image so I bumped up the exposure bias, 0.7 was my starting point. I ended up with 1.0 to 1.3 being the right value
• With mirrorless I should have been able to see the correct exposure, (with the histogram or just looking at the scene) however, my eyes usually over-compensate so everything always looks bright and I didn't quite have enough time to look at the histogram before this one took flight.
• Another factor was that I didn't want to blow the white in the head feathers so I didn't might erring on the side of underexposure. I knew I could fix things up a bit in post processing.
• So by the time I got it on to my computer I ended up masking the bird and bringing up the exposure on the bird by about 1/2 a stop and then darkening the sky by about 1/2 a stop to get a bit of separation between the sky and the head/tail feathers. (I also bumped up the shadows to get a bit more detail in the dark body feathers)

So in the end, positive exposure bias was needed, but it was because of the sky being dominant in the frame and not because of anything to do with the eagle.

 

[JoelKlein]

Good morning.
My understanding was that if the eagle is big enough in the frame, matrix should handle it

 

[NorthernFocus]

Nice shot and well processed. You got good wing position, the eye stands out, and the talons are visible. All good. As processed the sky is dark enough to make the white head/tail of the bird stand out against it. IMO a grey sky like this works just as well as a blue sky as BG. What's important is that the bird stands out from the BG and in this image it does. Nice job.

 

[RichardWB]

Hi,

A general question and then a request for "brutal" critique.

Q: Lets pretend the photo below is "acceptably good" ignoring the sky, what do you do with this sort of photo when all you have to play with is plain old grey skies? No texture, no clouds, etc. Do you toss it? Do you keep it but never show it to anyone? Replace the sky? Keep it until you get a better one?

So now for the critique. Please critique and be as honest as possible - I really will NOT be offended - I have very thick skin and would rather learn and improve than receive praise. I had about 30 minutes on Thanksgiving to run out and grab some shots before the family got too suspicious. I plan to get more time with this nesting pair of bald eagles and hopefully the weather will cooperate and I'll be able to spend more time with them in the future.

Some questions for critique (feel free to add your own thoughts on other items):

• I boosted the shadows on the bird - did I overdo it?
• I didn't remove the branches in the lower right since I kinda liked the diagonal of the leading edge of the eagle kinda matching the diagonal of the branches. Should I have removed or are they additive to the photo?

- Rob

View attachment 49895

Fully agree with the other comments: it is a very nice shot and I do not like when people change good natural photos to artificial ones by using photoshop.

 

[NorthernFocus]

Good morning.
My understanding was that if the eagle is big enough in the frame, matrix should handle it

If the eagle is just the right size in the frame then matrix will handle it. If it's too small the BG will dominate. If it's too large then the meter will over expose(because the bird is so dark). BIF shooting is even more complicated because the BG can change dramatically as the bird moves past trees, water, sky, etc. There's no black and white answer. We have to learn how the meter "sees" the world and then use our own judgement to tweak exposure with exposure compensation(EC) or by shooting in full manual mode(i.e. no auto ISO). It's fairly common practice to determine exposure for the bird and let everything else fall where it falls to be dealt with in post.

 

[dupcak]

Nice shot and well processed. You got good wing position, the eye stands out, and the talons are visible. All good. As processed the sky is dark enough to make the white head/tail of the bird stand out against it. IMO a grey sky like this works just as well as a blue sky as BG. What's important is that the bird stands out from the BG and in this image it does. Nice job.

Thanks for the analysis - it helps to know that I'm heading in the right direction. Self-doubt and self-critique are a specialty of mine.

 

[dupcak]

Fully agree with the other comments: it is a very nice shot and I do not like when people change good natural photos to artificial ones by using photoshop.

Completely agree for wildlife photography - manipulation has its place in artwork, but not here.

Thanks for the comments.

 

[dupcak]

Good morning.
My understanding was that if the eagle is big enough in the frame, matrix should handle it

Completely agree with @NorthernFocus - I did crop the photo so the bird wasn't the dominant item in the frame.

If I was really organized I could have set it up in full manual mode, but I generally shoot in manual+auto ISO and therefore had to dial in the exposure bias. I'm not usually comfortable with manual ISO but in this situation I could have made it work since the light was definitely not changing and there weren't different locations of sunny/shade that I had to contend with. Either way I would have had to adjust what the camera thought was "correct".

 

[JoelKlein]

If the eagle is just the right size in the frame then matrix will handle it. If it's too small the BG will dominate. If it's too large then the meter will over expose(because the bird is so dark). BIF shooting is even more complicated because the BG can change dramatically as the bird moves past trees, water, sky, etc. There's no black and white answer. We have to learn how the meter "sees" the world and then use our own judgement to tweak exposure with exposure compensation(EC) or by shooting in full manual mode(i.e. no auto ISO). It's fairly common practice to determine exposure for the bird and let everything else fall where it falls to be dealt with in post.

You nailed it.
I was thinking about going full M (Auto ISO off) but its not so hunky dory because the moment I touch the shutter speed while a bird takes off unexpectedly while the the ISO is locked, I’m going to run into a problem. One idea I had was to keep the ISO at 500 even when I could get it down to 300 or so, and stop worrying. The Z9 is ISO invariant and the stop or 2 up or down I could adjust in post.

 

[dupcak]

You nailed it.
I was thinking about going full M (Auto ISO off) but its not so hunky dory because the moment I touch the shutter speed while a bird takes off unexpectedly while the the ISO is locked, I’m going to run into a problem. One idea I had was to keep the ISO at 500 even when I could get it down to 300 or so, and stop worrying. The Z9 is ISO invariant and the stop or 2 up or down I could adjust in post.

Not that you asked, but here are a few random thoughts:

1) Keeping ISO locked down in a uniformly lit area can definitely work. (like my shot), but in patchy sunlight or going from shadow to sun it's going to be difficult at best
2) Scenes that line up with ISO 500 are going to be hard to come by in anything but perfect conditions (or mid-day) - at least I don't come across it all that often.
3) Bumping up/down a stop in post works well as long as you don't blow the highlights (or bury the blacks). Two stops can work as well, but it increases the chances of clipping the image one way or another.
4) For all the reasons above I tend to stick with auto ISO as my brain and fingers can adjust exposure compensation a lot easier/faster than ISO.

 

[NorthernFocus]

I was thinking about going full M (Auto ISO off)...and stop worrying....

That's the gist of it. Don't worry about getting every/missing a few shots. If you're shooting a static bird at 1/500s and it flies... oh well. If your expecting it to fly and are set up for that and end up with static shots at 1/3200s and higher than perfect ISO... oh well. Capturing less than perfect photos is not a capital offense. In most places...

 

[Duff Photographer]

"I boosted the shadows on the bird - did I overdo it?"

Only if noise is showing up.

Grey skies are good, and no worse or better than blue skies, depending on the subect. The worst are perhaps wholly "white" skies where there is too much contrast between the subect and the sky.

 

[dupcak]

"I boosted the shadows on the bird - did I overdo it?"

Only if noise is showing up.

Grey skies are good, and no worse or better than blue skies, depending on the subect. The worst are perhaps wholly "white" skies where there is too much contrast between the subect and the sky.

Thanks for the thoughts on the gray skies - I guess I just don't see too many "top notch" photos with out either blue skies or at least some texture to them.