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The Chase Is On
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The Chase Is On

by Dennis Plank

Gallery: AvianPosted July 7, 2015101 views7 comments

I'm going to post three or for shots from a chase I managed to catch last week.  The Juvenile Eagle had a fish hidden in that mass of seaweed and the near adult decided it wanted it and took off after the youngster.  The tactics were interesting to say the least.

7Dii, 500mm f4 ISL + 1.4TC, Jobu Gimbal on RRS legs, f/7.1, 1/4000, iso 500, manual exposure.  Took a bit off the left and stuck it on the right to give the birds a bitmore room to fly into.  Also added a touch of canvas on top.  Processed in LR5 & CS6.  Taken July 1st at 9:55 am.  Big Beef Creek near Seabeck, WA.

I value all your comments and criticisms.

Thanks,

Comments

7 comments
Comment posted by Howard Cheek on July 7, 2015 at 12:17 AM

Both in sharp focus, great interaction Dennis.

Excellent exposure and PP work, especially like your soft BG heredevil

Registered on July 24, 2008, 1201 Posts, 10758 Comments
Comment posted by Jim DeWitt on July 7, 2015 at 4:35 AM

Good capture, Dennis. The adult bird has his head turned, of course, but it's still a strong shot. I wonder if you could have dropped the aperture to 5.6 or so, kept the birds in focus and blurred the background a bit more? 

Registered on August 28, 2006, 1240 Posts, 8506 Comments
Comment posted by Jim Hansen on July 7, 2015 at 4:47 AM

Very nice image Dennis.  Great interaction.  I like the background, divided roughly into thirds, but agree with Jim that it might be improved with a little more blur/wider f-stop.  

Registered on May 5, 2011, 161 Posts, 908 Comments
Comment posted by Dennis Plank on July 7, 2015 at 12:47 PM

 

Jim & Jim.  Good suggestion on the bg,.  The f-stop was chosen because the action happens at lots of different distances at this site and I wanted reasonable dof for frame filling shots, so 7.1 was my compromise.  I figured it's easy enough to add blur in pp, but awful hard to remove it.

sad

 

 

 

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments
Comment posted by Kurt Bowman on July 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM

Nice capture of the action Dennis and looking forward to seeing more of this sequence. I am fine with your choice for DOF in this. I do wish you had some better head turn coming from the adult, but certainly nothing you could have done about it.

Registered on June 19, 2008, 1005 Posts, 8028 Comments
Comment posted by Allen Brooks on July 7, 2015 at 2:48 PM

Well done in capturing this interaction between the eagles.  The eagles are sharp and I'd say the background is blurred enough so the eagles stand out, but still gives a sense of where they are.  Seeing more of the adult eagle's head would be nice, but on the other hand its position tells the story as it is clearly intent upon what the other eagle has in its talons.

Registered on July 27, 2011, 262 Posts, 2597 Comments
Comment posted by Steve Thompson on July 7, 2015 at 7:27 PM

Nice capture of the action. These encounters are fun to watch and see how they play out. Well done on the processing. Waiting to see if who gets the fish...

Registered on August 7, 2014, 125 Posts, 2319 Comments