Eagle Skirmishes
8 images
According to Joe Ordonez (author of Where Eagles Gather, the Story of the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, Haines, Alaska) bald eagles in the preserve rarely dive down to pull swimming fish out of the river. Instead, they look for other eagles feeding on fish and dive down to steal the fish. Capturing images of the battles that ensue is of high priority for most of the photographers that gather here with the eagles. The fights are often brief and may occur unexpectedly. The photographer has almost no control of light angle, body position and other photographic niceties. The action is intense and acquiring good photographic representations of the interactions depends to an undesirable degree upon luck. As the following shots illustrate, I initially underestimated how much space the two birds would occupy during the interactions and often did not get both birds fully in the frame. Focus on a specific part of a bird during the action was, for me, almost impossible. Most of my shots of the battle to possess the salmon was truly point and shoot and hoping the ads about the amazing auto focus properties of the D500 were accurate. Also, I was in constant conflict about shutter speed and aperture settings. Except for the first day of our visit, light levels were low because of heavy cloud cover. Using apertures that admitted more light and shutter speeds that might freeze the action limited depth of field and reduced the probability of having both birds in focus. The decisions I made about these settings produced a preponderance of images in which at least one of the birds was not in sharp focus. But in this and the next blog entry or two, I will show you the best shots that I was able to get of the eagles fighting for the salmon.
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