Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle

On Sunday I went to Orlando Wetlands Park in search of a Vermilion Flycatcher.  It was great to see the flycatcher, but the added bonus was a bald eagle perched in a tree not far from the path I was walking on.  The  problem was the lighting.  It was a cloudy day, and I had to overexpose the bird by 1-2/3 stops to get the dark feathers properly exposed.  This made the sky even more problematic.  Here's what my first batch of photographs looked like.

Bald Eagle

The sky is nearly white, and on my monitor the back of the eagle's head does not stand out from the background nearly enough.  But the eagle was very close to me, so I wanted to make something out of the opportunity.

As you may be able to tell from the highlights in this photo, the sun was coming from in front of me and to my right.  So I decided to walk down the path until I had the view you see in the top photograph.  This made the lighting on the eagle a little more even, and the clouds in the background were a little thinner from that angle.  While I'd prefer a bluer sky in the background (or, even better, out of focus green trees), at least the setting improved enough that I didn't mind making a blog post out of it.