![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/bald-eagle-6454-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"bald-eagle-6454-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nThis time with something in the background other than plain blue sky.<\/p>\n
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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 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 I photographed this adult Bald Eagle just over a week ago as ‘he’ was hunting ducks at a local pond. Three days later I posted several photos of him in flight and lamented the plain blue sky background in most of them. Everything else being equal I prefer to have non-homogenous backgrounds in my photos.<\/p>\n I hadn’t included this photo of the same eagle in my earlier post because the tip of his right wing is so close to the bottom of the frame which isn’t an ideal placement of the bird. But when I actually processed the shot and looked at the finished product I decided that minor imperfection was more than compensated for by the out of focus trees in the bottom half of the frame. I think they provide welcome context to the photo and help to ‘ground’ the eagle without distracting the viewer from the subject at hand.<\/p>\n Besides I like the photo quite a lot for other reasons too, including some insights it provides into the developmental stages of Bald Eagles. We can see remnants of the bird’s recent immature or sub-adult status including the traces of dark color still present on the side of his otherwise yellow bill and the single mottled white secondary feather remaining on his right wing.<\/p>\n Raptor authority Jerry Liquori puts it this way: “Since individual eagles molt at slightly different rates, the plumage of older birds may not always correlate with their age in years”.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This time with something in the background other than plain blue sky.<\/p>\n