Sea Eagles

The majestic sea eagle.

Nice shot, but is it my crappy work monitor or is the head area over exposed?

Never noticed but maybe a little. Anyway forgot the profile shot.

Yeah I cannot reliably say on these monitors.

Great shot.

The first one is gorgeous! Never mind it's, somewhat harsh contrast - the posture is so appealing, that it rendered me breathless. It's the second one that does need a little post processing - that grayish/blueish cast could be removed (so that the white feathers become really white), and the brown patch just above the head should be blurred (maybe even "dodged", too).

Points taken. Here is one with the head down a little. It's is a little hard to isolate the exposure of such a brilliant white head. Too much or too little, Hmmm.

"hard to isolate the exposure of such a brilliant white head". Yes, now this third one suffers from shadowed legs and neck. But, I am so delighted with the first one that I will keep it in my collection of birds' pics. Thank you, dear colleague!

If you have no objections, I'd post a slightly corrected second pic...

Wow, those are magnificent birds!

Scott Murray said:

Nice shot, but is it my crappy work monitor or is the head area over exposed?

Click to expand...

My histogram shows both blacks and whites are a little hot on the first. Exposure on the third is spot on. Regardless, gorgeous bird.

Great shots Brian. I agree that in harsh sunlight birds with contrasting B & W can be hard to expose for. I think you have done extremely well.

Scott Murray said:

Great shots Brian. I agree that in harsh sunlight birds with contrasting B & W can be hard to expose for. I think you have done extremely well.

Click to expand...

At the risk of sounding like I'm advocating accidental overexposure ::what::, you can try pulling back on the highlights in post to recover some of the detail in the white feathers on the neck. Even in the attached jpeg there's enough information to show that the details are there to be recovered.



That's the beauty of shooting RAW, there's so much more light information present in the file than what is shown at any given time - you just need to access it. "Over-exposure", particularly in difficult lighting conditions and with detailed and varying subject (like birds), is sometimes just a result of one interpretation of the photo based on the camera profile used in ACR or in producing the JPEG. If you knock the exposure down and see the details then they are there to be accessed and not lost to overexposure. Some situations are impossible to capture "in camera", so check the histogram and as long as you don't have a wall on the left or right you should be good.

Thanks Jake.