One Second – Don’t Miss It

This is one of my favorite Bald Eagle photographs. There are better photos of Eagles out there to be sure, but here the bird fills the frame (I cropped left and right only), the angle of the turn is nice, and most of all the sunlight is coming from the right direction.

Despite the fact that there were thousands of Bald Eagles in the river valley that day, not much was happening. I sat in the snow for hours watching, waiting. Finally a bird takes off from a tree branch, turns to his left, and lands again. The whole flight, upon reviewing my exif data, lasted five seconds. I took 15 frames in that time. Only for one of those seconds was the Eagle catching the sun with his wings spread.

In photography, one second can make the whole day worthwhile.

11:19:14 AM; ISO 400, f/5.0, 1/1600 sec

Posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 9:15 am. Filed under: Blog, New Work, Photography Tips, Travel Photography, Wildlife Photography Tags: Alaska, america, american, bald eagle, feathers, flight, fly, portrait, raptor, square, turn, wings, wingspan RSS 2.0 feed.