{"id":79570,"date":"2019-12-18T06:14:18","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T13:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=79570"},"modified":"2019-12-18T12:15:17","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T19:15:17","slug":"golden-eagle-banking-in-flight-in-warm-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/18\/golden-eagle-banking-in-flight-in-warm-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Eagle Banking In Flight In Warm Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning we finally had some light around here and I even found some beautiful birds to take advantage of it. This Golden Eagle is one of them.<\/p>\n

Only minutes after dawn we spotted a large group of ravens among the sagebrush and not far from the road. When that happens I always suspect they’re on carrion and wonder if a raptor or two might be among them so I slowed my pickup to check them out as I got closer. Before I noticed them on the ground two Golden Eagles lifted off and flew to the west and very close to the ground. By the time I pulled over and angled my pickup properly near what appeared to be a dead rabbit in the snow-covered sage the eagles were flying away from me and a little too far away for decent photos.<\/p>\n

But then something wonderful happened. Both eagles, while still flying only a few feet above the ground, banked steeply in the air as they turned to fly back in my general direction.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Luckily I chose this one to focus on. In this shot I caught the eagle at a perfect angle to expose “his” entire ventral surface to the beautiful warm light and still give me eye contact and a catch light. Though it may (or may not) look like he’s flying above me with storm clouds behind him I was actually shooting horizontally. We see mostly snow covered sage in the lower background and mountains in the upper background.<\/p>\n

I made no color\/tonal\/saturation adjustments to the image during processing.<\/p>\n

I love the photo but as usual it isn’t perfect. Once again (just like the previous morning with the female kestrel I posted yesterday<\/a>) I was having difficulty getting sharp shots all morning and this one is a tad short of tack sharp but it’s the sharpest in the series.<\/p>\n

I believe I know why I’ve been having trouble getting sharp shots on these cold mornings recently and it’s related to temperature.<\/p>\n

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This was the outside temperature six minutes after I took the previous eagle photo.<\/p>\n

So I was sticking my warm (presumed 70\u00b0) lens out my window and into air that was 64\u00b0 colder than that so it may have been contraction of glass and other lens components in the extreme cold that caused the softness. But there’s another more likely possibility that’s also temperature related. When I stop my pickup in extreme cold to photograph birds out my window I can often see heat waves rising up in front of me from the exhaust system of my vehicle. Those heat waves were often visible yesterday and shooting through them is a recipe for soft photos.<\/p>\n

Unusually cold temperatures are a two-edged sword for me because they usually bring more migrating raptors to northern Utah and cold makes them “sticky” (reluctant to fly off as I approach). But there’s a flip side. Extreme cold often makes getting sharp shots much more difficult when I’m shooting from my pickup.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not I saw an even dozen Golden Eagles yesterday in a 2 1\/2 hour time frame. Two or three of them may have been counted twice (same general area a couple of hours apart) but that’s still a one day record for me with Golden Eagles. One of them didn’t even fly off when I drove past within 25′ of it.<\/p>\n

It was a “golden” kind of morning for both eagles and light.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note:<\/em><\/p>\n

The answer is “yes” to both obvious questions about the last photo:<\/em><\/p>\n