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In the title I couldn't resist a comical reference to the song "Bad
Bad Leroy Brown" by Jim Croce. Throughout my life I have noticed
that raptors often sit on dead trees, which are leafless and
give the bird an unobstructed view on all sides. This bird,
however, has figured out how to create his own scenic overlook,
with no need to limit himself to the branches of trees that have
long since passed away. He merely flys up a bit sideways and
grabs the top of the tree with his claws after which his weight
bends the treetop horizontally so that he has a nice little lazy
boy with a big bay window. As my brother spotted this eagle my
first instinct was to quickly fire away. When I found that I had
more time I settled down and adjusted my camera settings, and
once I had already secured some good shots I set up my tripod so
that I could get some high resolution images with good depth of
field. Taking another dozen photos or so I decided that the
images I subsequently captured were probably as good as it was
going to get and that from here on out I needed to go after a
something really exceptional. I knew that sooner or
later this bald eagle would lift off and it was my intention to
capture that moment, so I readjusted my shutter and aperture
settings and patiently waited. I know that a lot of people
would have used continuous shutter and would have gotten a
handful of pictures during different phases of the lift off. I
have been doing photography a lot of years and I guess, for
better or worse, I'm a little set in my ways, the ways of
pre-technology. I did everything manually and only got one shot,
relying on my experience and my reflexes. Having done so, I
couldn't be happier with the result, my timing had been
impeccable. |
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