Today went out "eagle hunting" with Paige. I love looking through the trees and getting all excited when seeing one! I wish this year was a little colder because there aren't many in the area. I didn't think we would be successful at all, but we did see about 5-6 of them.
I didn't rent an awesome lens this year, I just used my old Canon 75-300 lens. It doesn't have the lens stabilization on it, but because it was bright outside today, I had some fast shutter speeds going. This lens isn't very sharp anyway. Oh well, one day I'll have some L glass!
This morning I left the house about 6:15 am and headed out to Horseshoe Lake Park because I saw a picture on Flickr of an eagle out there and thought that might be a cool place to try. I was hurrying because I wanted to see if I could get some sunrise pictures also.
I really lucked out! The sunrise was absolutely gorgeous this morning- much prettier than the gray day we're having. I rode around the park taking tons of pictures of the sunrise from different viewpoints. I didn't see any eagles around there though, and was a little disappointed in that.
I left Horseshoe park once the sunrise beauty was starting to fade. I knew that my kids wouldn't be awake yet- it was only about 8:30 am and it's a Saturday morning. I still had about 2 hours to mess with.
I decided to head back to the Alton area to see if I could see some more eagles this morning. I've read that the most active times for them are sunrise and sunset because they like to eat at those times. That must be true because last night's eagle adventures were successful and this morning's as well. I am very very excited about this picture in particular because it is the clearest one I've gotten thus far:
Not too long after I took this one, the eagle took off and although it's not crisp and clear, I like this shot too:
I know that this is supposed to be 1 picture a day, but I got too many good shots to just pick one today and wanted to share all of them.
I'm not going to post EXIF information because I don't want to have to look that up for each of these pictures. When shooting sunrises and eagles, I think that most of the time it's just pure luck when getting a shot instead of settings on a camera anyway.
Tonight was a lot of fun. I went to look for eagles with two of my best friends and we saw about 4-5 eagles, I fell down a hill, I got to eat a bread bowl filled with soup and I had some great conversation with my friends.
Not bad for a Friday night.
I was happy with the amount of eagles that we saw, but in order to get a larger, more close-up shot of the eagle I had to use my not-so-great-not-image-stabilized 70-300 lens. It shows. I'm not extremely thrilled with the shots that I got, but honestly I had so much fun that doesn't matter.
When I was actually getting pretty close to the eagle on the water, I somehow lost my footing, took a tumble and landed on some rocks, rolled down a hill, and ended up with several bruises and a sore shoulder, ankle and wrist. For some, that may have ruined the night, but it just sent me off into a bunch of laughter and I still can't stop. Every once in a while I burst out just thinking about it. The thing I was most concerned about was if I hurt my camera or lens somehow. I took a few pictures after the "incident" and they seem to be working OK. My flash was not flashing, but I'm hoping that is due to weak batteries and not some cracked part of the flash. I'm charging the batteries and keeping my fingers crossed.
I have more pictures, but I haven't had time to go through all of them. For the ones that I posted:
#1 EXIF info: Canon T2i, f9, 1/125 sec, ISO 200, 300mm, no flash
#2 EXIF info: Canon T2i, f9, 1/40 sec, ISO 200, 300mm, no flash
All that I would do differently this time is try not to fall...Of course I'd love a lens that could zoom right on up in the eagles' faces extremely clear, but I might try to rent a lens another day.
Today went out "eagle hunting" with Paige. I love looking through the trees and getting all excited when seeing one! I wish this year was a little colder because there aren't many in the area. I didn't think we would be successful at all, but we did see about 5-6 of them.
I didn't rent an awesome lens this year, I just used my old Canon 75-300 lens. It doesn't have the lens stabilization on it, but because it was bright outside today, I had some fast shutter speeds going. This lens isn't very sharp anyway. Oh well, one day I'll have some L glass!
Ca