As I mentioned a few times, I've wanted to get out to our cottage in the Turku archipelago to see if I can snag a picture of a white-tailed eagle, the biggest predatory bird in Finland. The problem with that is that the eagles are not particularly plentiful, and usually they are ridiculously skittish, never flying close enough to you for any sort of proper photo. All that said, I usually see an eagle almost each time I'm out there. Granted, I keep looking in the direction they usually are, and more importantly, my dad who spends most of his time at the cottage has a very good eye for spotting any bird no matter how far away.
So, a few weeks ago I was out there for a couple of days, hoping to see an eagle and maybe even get a nice picture. In three days, I was without a camera two times. Guess when the eagle decided to show up? It even flaunted, flying really close (about 30 meters or so), which they almost never do. Personally, it was the closest encounter to one of them I've ever had. And even though that in itself was awesome, missing the shot annoyed me to no end.
Jump forward to last weekend, I had a free Sunday so I called my dad and decided to try again. The weather was nice, so spending the entire day out by the sea would be great, regardless of eagles. I drove out there, got out of the car, and walked down to the beach. We started discussing the weather and wildlife of the last couple of days with my dad; there was a huge racket from a hundred or so seagulls as well as eiders and cormorants out on the sea. Suddenly I see a big bird in the corner of my eye. My brain takes a second to process it, my hands grab my camera and point it, and I press down the shutter release.
I had learned my lesson, so I had set up my camera before getting out of the car. It was fully ready to go, and luckily, so was I. The first shot isn't sharp (at least when looking more closely) but the rest are as sharp as my 300mm can make them. So, I got 5 fully usable frames of my favorite bird, literally less than 20 minutes after getting to the cabin. I'm guessing the eagle decided to repay its shameless behavior from before (it is the same one, I recognize the shaggy feathering).
When deciding which one to use for the final image, I look for three things; sharpness, wing position, and other interest in the frame. The first image is fine for the second, but not the two other ones. The fourth is sharp and it has a relatively nice wing position, but it lacks other interest. The last image has all three, or at least as good as any of them. I decided to crop in for better composition, and I also warmed the image up a bit. There was some red in the tree that i added to as well (don't know what it is, there are no leaves on them yet. Probably the brown color with some purple fringing).
I'll take it! (300mm, f5.6, 1/1000th, ISO400)
I spent the rest of the day on the beach, fishing whitefish and shooting the various birds out and about. More on those in another post, but I just want to mention that I saw the same bird later that day, this time further away. I have about 15 frames of it, the closest being this:
No crop, no processing (as can be seen from the huge dust spot). Yes, there is a bird somewhere in there.
100% crop, enlarged 2X. The same eagle, but not a very usable photo unfortunately.
What I did get was a some frames with the eagle among some seagulls. The gulls typically start harassing the eagle when it comes close, since it likes to eat baby gulls. One of the pics had positioning which I quite liked, and after some processing I got this:
Not the best image, but I like how the eagle flies above the gulls. The eagles generally don't give a rats ass about gulls harassing them, so it's completely true to life :)
That's it for this one. I'll keep editing the rest of the pics (there are 1355 of them, these got priority for some reason ;) ) and make another post with those. I even got a nice sunset at the end, not a bad day at all.