As I walking along one of the trails last Friday at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, I spotted a Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) perched in a distant tree. I had a pretty clear view of the eagle across an open, marshy area, but I couldn’t get closer without totally blocking my area. I decided to stop and to observe the eagle, hoping that the eagle would fly across the open area if it decided to take off.
In my experience, eagles generally fly away from me or behind trees, so many of my shots of flying eagles show their tail feathers or a blurry silhouette of the eagle with branches in focus. Getting a proper exposure can be a little tricky, especially when the light is bright, and it is easy to blow out the highlights in the white head or lose feather details in the shadow areas.
I watched and waited and was prepared when the eagle took off in my desired direction, flying across my field of view. Although the eagle initially flew behind some trees, I managed to keep my focus on the bird, as you can see in the last photo—amazingly the eye of the eagle is in focus. (As you can probably tell, the photos are presented in reverse chronological order.)
I continued to track the eagle as it flew into the open sky. In a number of my shots, the eagle’s wings blocked its head or hid it in the shadows—wing positions really matter, so I took a lot of shots. The second shot does a nice job of showing the interplay of light and shadows, which can be a particular problem in the middle of the day, when shadows are harsh, compared with the softer light near dawn and dusk.
This is one of the best sequence of images that I have managed to capture of an eagle in flight, but I will try to do even better in the upcoming months. In YouTube video reviews of some of the new high-end mirrorless cameras, I have seen pro photographers demonstrate amazing focus systems that allow them to lock and hold focus on the eyes of moving birds and animals.
I personally find it hard to justify spending that amount of money on a camera system—the combined cost of a top-end camera and long telephoto lens is about as much as I paid for my car—and am content for now to use a hands-on approach with my more “primitive” DSLR set-up. It’s a challenge, but a fun challenge, to try to photograph birds in flight and it is such a thrill when everything comes together and I am successful.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
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