View allAll Photos Tagged birdsofprey
endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” ~ Washington Irving
Okay, so after spending some time at one of the eagles nest I visit I decided to stop by and visit the owls just to see if there was anything interesting going on. I ran into two other photographers I know there and spent most of the time just talking with them as the little ones were just sleeping and the parents were well hidden high up in the mighty oaks.
Then just as I was getting ready to leave and head to another eagle's nest, mom flew from her hiding place in the moss and landed on a branch that was more in the open. I walked around looking from different angles to see if I could get her in a shot with her little ones. It wasn't long before I found my angle, but she was sitting high in a different tree in the yard next door and there was approximately 75 feet between the two. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not seem to get that kind of DoF at 250mm with a focusing distance of only about 50'.
So, I decided to try a little focus-bracketing. I shot a 3 exposure burst of of the little ones in sharp focus and then switched my focus to mom and popped off another 3 shots. I also had to make a quick exposure adjustment as mom was really in the shadows. I repeated this process several times until I caught them all looking in basically the right direction.
Once I got home I picked the set that looked the best and then chose a single exposure from each. I adjusted them individually in Lightroom 4 to make them match tone wise. I then opened both in PSCS5 and combined the two exposures with different focal points into one image. Then I did a little tweaking in the OnOne Suite and ended up with what you see here.
Mom looks closer then she actually was due to what some refer to as zoom lens compression or perspective distortion effect. Either way, I kind of like it. What do you think?
#birds #birdsofprey #nikon #nikon200400 #cool #hunter #predator
A awesome day out at Gauntlets Birds of Prey Knutsford. Shame for the weather and i felt rough.
Correct me if I am wrong on the species...
I took my dad here for his 50th birthday, so we took the camera, glad we did got some great results!