In the Field

Taking Flight - Adult Bald Eagle. Great Bear Rainforest (northern BC coast). October 10, 2008.

As with almost any image, photographing birds in flight is an exercise in optimization. After you've decided your creative approach (freeze or blur the motion being one decision) you have to actively choose the appropriate shutter speed, aperture/depth of field, ISO, and, of course, your choice of lens to produce the desired result. And, with much of wildlife photography, you have to make all these decisions, adjust your camera and lens accordingly, in just seconds.

The situation under which I shot this image effectively removed many decisions from my control. We were in an inflatable Zodiac boat and moving (under power) directly at the perched bird. I had a 600 mm lens mounted on my D3 and had no time to change to another lens/camera combo (not that I wanted to). My only option in the boat was to hand-hold the lens. Even though the lens is equipped with an effective VR mechanism, I knew that the combination of the the vibration of the boat's engine, the rocking of the waves, and the necessity of hand-holding the lens, meant that I had to open up the lens's aperture and go for a high shutter speed (at the expense of depth of field). Because 1) capturing both highlight and shadow detail in an adult Bald Eagle challenges the dynamic range of almost any digital sensor and 2) the dynamic range of the D3 (like most cameras) is maximized at its base ISO setting, I shot the image at "only" ISO 200. This forced my hand even more - I had to pretty much open the aperture wide up and pray that I'd have the depth of field to capture the critical parts of the eagle with sufficient sharpness.

Beyond the obvious issue of finding a high enough shutter speed to permit me to hand-hold the massive 600 mm lens while freezing the action, I faced two further challenges in capturing this image. The first was autofocus - I was pretty sure that I would have had a devil of time keeping the focus bracket on the bird's head (which I REALLY wanted sharp), so I opted to place the focus bracket on the larger shoulder region of the bird. And then prayed that the head would fall within the limits of the depth of field of the large aperture. The second issue was exposure - specifically, avoiding blowing out the highlight detail. I have enough experience with Nikon's matrix metering to know that I had to significantly underexpose the image (relative to the "suggested" exposure). So I underexposed the image by one and a third stops.

Seems pretty simple - right? In theory, yes. But, the "trick" is in doing it all in the ten seconds you have from seeing the eagle to capturing the image. And in having more than a little luck!

Behind the Camera

Taking Flight - Adult Bald Eagle. Great Bear Rainforest (northern BC coast). October 10, 2008.

Digital Capture; Compressed RAW (NEF) 14-bit format; ISO 200.

Nikon D3 with AF-S Nikkor 600mm f/4G IF-ED II VR lens - handheld in moving Zodiac inflatable boat. VR turned to "On" and in "Normal" mode. Autofocus set to M/a mode.

1/1600s @ f5; -1.3 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.

At the Computer

Taking Flight - Adult Bald Eagle. Great Bear Rainforest (northern BC coast). October 10, 2008.

RAW Conversion to 16-bit TIFF, including first-pass/capture sharpening, exposure compensation, slight shadow/highlight adjustment, and white balance adjustment using Phase One's Capture One Pro 4.5. Multiple RAW conversions (2 at different exposure settings: +.5 stops as base exposure and -.25 stops to retrieve highlight detail on the white head and tail).

Further digital corrections on 16-bit TIFF file using Adobe's Photoshop CS3. Adjustments included compositing and masking of both exposure versions, selective application of warming filter, selective colour satuation and selective sharpening for web output.

Conservation

Taking Flight - Adult Bald Eagle. Great Bear Rainforest (northern BC coast). October 10, 2008.

Ten percent of the revenue generated by this image will be donated to Raincoast.

Species Status in Canada*: This species is not designated as at risk. The Bald Eagle was listed as "Endangered" in the contiguous US states from 1967 to 1995. In 1995 it was downlisted to "Threatened". On June 28, 2007 Bald Eagles were removed from the list of endangered and threatened species - a true American conservation success story.

The Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a very large bird of prey with broad wings. Adults possess characteristic white ("bald") heads. It takes Bald Eagles a full five years to attain their characteristic adult plumage (including their nearly pure white head and tail). In the years prior to the development of their adult plumage they are easy to confuse with Golden Eagles. Being very broad-winged Bald Eagles are able to use an energy-efficient flapping-soaring style of flight. While many people like to think of the Bald Eagle as a fierce hunter, in reality they hunt only as a last resort. More commonly they scavenge for their prey. Additionally, they often klepto-parasitize other weaker species such as Osprey, commonly stealing the other species hard-earned prey items. The Bald Eagle is, of course, the national emblem of the United States (Benjamin Franklin argued against this - his preference was for the Wild Turkey).

This Bald Eagles were photographed in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest. While Bald Eagles are currently not under the threat of extinction, they do, of course, require suitable breeding habitat to continue to thrive. The Raincoast Conservation Society (and Foundation) is an effective and efficient organization that has been fighting for protection of this unique habitat. If you are looking for a meaningful way to contribute to the conservation of this amazing ecosystem, Raincoast will provide maximal "bang" for your conservation dollars.

*as determined by COSEWIC: The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada