Wild Golden Eagle

[FourRingCircus]

After several years of being told to invest in 'proper' image processing software (and after more than a year of utterly failing to get along with LightRoom), I finally sat down with an experienced LR user, who succeeded in getting my autistic brain to make some sense out of the LR GUI.

I should apologise to all those stallwarts here (you know who you are!) who told me repeatidly that my basic edits using FastStone were not up to par, for my inability to get along with the Adobe software and for my intransigence in not 'getting with the program'.

I've been on a sabatical from TP for a good few months (since the last user cull), but have returned because I can finally understand what was being said to me in the terminology stakes, now that I am no longer put-off by people explaining to me, that which I could not accept - my tool of choice was not up to the job. The only trouble now is that I have a library of 20k+ images which were not fit for purpose, many of which are gaining a new lease of life thanks to LR! Here is one such capture, taken last year in Perthshire and which was effectively binned as a poor shot. I'll be interested to hear what folks make of this heavilly edited image before perhaps displaying the original which came SOOC.....

No need to be gentle with your comments - I'm still very-much a learner with LR/PS, so say what you see and I'll be grateful.

5Diii, 1000mm, F11, 1/1000s, ISO400.

 

[Phil-D]

It still looks very dark to me John, with very little detail under the wing, I say still because, although I haven't seen the sooc shot, at those settings I would say it was underexposed.

Shooting into a sky like that would need to be overexposed on the meter, at a guess by 2/3rds to a stop. No need to stop down to f/11, you could have saved a stop of light @ f/8 and gained anymore on the ISO

Did you shoot it in raw? I'm no expert in PP'ing and still have loads to learn but if you did shoot in raw, I'm sure there's more detail available, although that will create more noise.

Nodoubt somebody with more PP'ing knowledge will be a long

 

[FourRingCircus]

I was driving up a single track road, there was a vehicle coming the other way and this beast appeared off the hillside to my right. I grabbed the camera/lens off the back seat and fired without a chance to consider the settings, so whilst I agree that it could have been a heck of a lot better, I'm actually quite amazed that there is any detail shown at all....!!

Maybe it's better if I show what the camera captured, then the merits (or otherwise) of the processing can be gauged......

 

[Mark-Anthony]

From your original shot, to the finished one I'd say you done very well considering it was shot from a car. I agree it is a little dark, but easily savable

 

[GeeJay57]

From your original shot, to the finished one I'd say you done very well considering it was shot from a car. I agree it is a little dark, but easily savable

I agree..

 

[BillN_33]

From your original shot, to the finished one I'd say you done very well considering it was shot from a car. I agree it is a little dark, but easily savable

I do as well - the only comment I can usefully make is that you could improve the bg slightly and get rid of the "lines" - but presumably you have applied NR when you brought the shadows back

If you give it a little more space around it . it will help to improve the composition, IMHO and in a way you may also get more definition .. in that there is not 100% focus on the bird

 

[den]

Getting it correct in camera saves you spending so much time in any editing suite , from what I can see from the original ,taking in to consideration I am only viewing on phone it appears your camera settings are not correct for your subject , ok it's a grab shot but I am sure you must have had a few secs to have a quick check at the screen on the camera and adjust settings accordingly, looking at the final image it does look like the editing that as been done as salvaged the shot but it could have been so much better

 

[gramps]

I think the recovery has been done very well ... as it is a 'recovery' it suffers from not being as good as it could be but I would be happy with a Golden Eagle image I could work with

 

[FourRingCircus]

Bill - the background was my first atempt at adding some colour in Photoshop via the gradient tool. Never done anything like this before and I didn't actually notice the lines until you mentioned them! Still at the very beginning of the learning curve with this. As for additional space, I'm not inclined to favour a load of sky about the subject and even less so when it's such a big bird, but I respect that we all like different things.

Den - trust me, from seeing the bird to hitting the brakes, grabbing a big lens off the back seat, getting the window down and motioning to the oncomming driver that I was aware of his presence, finding the target via a 1000mm tool (not so easy when they are close and moving), right through to clicking the shutter, there was no time at all to look at the back of the camera and make considered adjustments. Golden Eagles are not exactly keen on a human presence and unfortunately, they don't hang about for a pose at this range!!