Upde Designs

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/500 sec @ f6.3

Happy Monday. I hope you are not getting tired of Eagle pictures because I’ve got a ton of them.  🙂  Actually I have a lot less now than I did yesterday.  I spent much of the day going through the 700 images and culling them down to 172 images.  Of those 172 you may only see 6 or 10 of them.

The image of a soaring Eagle is interesting if you know what was happening when I took it.  Imagine me with my camera on a tripod (well actually because the lens is so big and heavy the lens is on the tripod and the camera is attached to the lens.)  The icy wind is blowing at 35 mph, I’m trying to focus on an Eagle 400 500 yards away and I see this Eagle take off.  Now the Tamron lens is very slow to auto focus and I forget about the quick release on the tripod so I pick the camera, lens, and tripod up trying to catch an Eagle in mid-flight.  I’ll let that image resonate with you for a moment.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/500 sec @ f.63

Above is an image of three Eagles at water’s edge.  The middle eagle looks to have no legs.  Apparently he/she is standing behind a small rise in the ice.  With the gray skies, the gray ice, and the gray water (yes I enhanced the water a tad) it was really difficult for the Tamron lens to find enough contrast to focus.  Of course it never occurred to me to switch to manual focus.  Frankly as cold as it was I don’t think that would have worked either because my fingers were already numb.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/500 sec @ f.63

Finally something I see in my day job from time to time is a little turf protection going on in the image above.  The Eagle on the right has its talon on what is left of a fish.  I watched this scene for several minutes as I half expected there to be a battle.  The Eagle on the left finally gave up and flew off.  Soon after that an immature Eagle landed and spent a lot of time sizing up the older Eagle.  I’ve got some interesting images of that confrontation to share with you later.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great week and be careful.