Osprey with fish

This has been one of my most sought after subjects in the avian realm. On a recent workshop I was able to fulfil this dream and capture one of the migrant Western Osprey with a fish it had just caught. It was incredible to sit and watch it hunt for nearly 30 min before he dived and smashed this fish. It was to far for any shots but as if scripted it flew across the dam to us as if to show off with his mid morning snack !

So as you will see below from the technical settings , I was using a 300 mm lens with a 2x extender or converter at a aperture of F8 to get the best out of the combination of the lens and extender .  Many people in the bird photography world would criticise me that I shot using matrix (full area) metering and not spot metering as that would be norm for a small dark subject with a light background.

Instead I chose to use my standard and use the exposure compensation on +2/3 which in most conditions helps get just enough detail in the dark areas underwing. Shooting at 10 am with already harsh light  does not mean one cannot get a usable image , especially if its is a once in a life time chance.

As with many of my images , I feel it important to show some of the simple changes one needs to make when developing the image from the raw file to a finished output image. As you will see there is no magic , just simple steps you can take. It may be a little over saturated for some , but i enjoy a image full of colour and punch. The only two things are the camera profile and sharpen that I use are not shown (couldn’t get all on one screen).

Please feel free to share your thoughts and or opinions below and I will gladly answer as best I can.

Peace and Light – AA