jim_fenton3

I had the wonderful experience of observing and photographing this

beautiful fox in very sweet light at dawn this past weekend. I

observed it for close to twenty minutes at close range as it hunted

and fed and as it moved on I whistled once and captured this image as

it turned to look at me.

Shot just before the sun crested a nearby mountain yesterday, this

scene presented an interesting challenge for 2 reasons:

A) I had to overexpose the background snow in order o light the bird

adequately as he was backlit.

B) I had to pan at a fairly slow shutter speed for 500MM in order to

not have substantial motion blur.

The blue which is evident in the birds shadow was in fact there to my

eyes when I shot this and I have therefore opted to leave it as

captured.

The color cast is absolutely correct.

It was shot just prior to sunset and the light was in the 5800-5900K range at that point.

I shoot long light in the afternoon intentionally for this effect.

And the reason I haven't been a paying member for a while, is the method they use to score images for the TOP RATED PHOTOS.

Why in the world do they use the anonymous ratings? Invariably, someone who either is just a schmuck or someone trying to protect their own ratings, gives myself and other decent photographers, something outrageous like a 3/3 and it absolutely kills your chances.

Why do they depend on people who hide their identity rather than use the scores from those folks who aren't afraid to hide?

I wrote to the folks who run the site and have asked the question, but have yet to receive a response.

By the way...I truly appreciate all the kind words and the time which you folks have taken to look at and comment on this image :)

Thanks,

Jim Fenton

When I get some time this weekend, I'll have to play with this a bit.

This is the 2nd crop rendition I've used and folks seem to like it, but square may just do the trick even better :)

Quite honestly was to smoke a cigar before I dared look to see if the focus was good.

I had a 60 image (all framed), 6 week exhibition beginning the next Day at Massachusetts Audubon and I had just left there, kiddingly proclaiming that I was going to get a killer bald eagle shot for my opening. Little did I realize that the nature and photo gods were watching out for me :)

I knew I had caught the action in frame OK.....I was darned excited when I finally dared to look at the LCD and saw that it was in fact in focus and that the EV compensation I had dialed in was in deed correct for the overall scene luminosity values.

It was an hour before sunset and I had watched the left hand eagle

through my binoculars as it flew towards me from down river.

It was very low to the water and from my observations, this tells me

that the bird either is carrying food and attempting to fly below the

radar of other eagles or it is going to attempt a low level attack on

a duck or other waterfowl.

As it flew right past a group of common mergansers, I heard another

adult eagle which was perched across the river call out and saw it

leave it's perch. Assuming (and hoping) that some type of interaction

would take place, I locked focus on the low flying bird at about 70

yards out. I followed as it swept up from the river and started

firing as the other adult eagle came into frame. While I was

fortunate to capture several nice images, this one was the best. The

proximity and position to one another just made this one special. The

fact that the background was distant makes this stand out almost 3D

in print.

Image captured with a Nikon D2Xs, Nikon 500 AFSII lens and Nikon

TC14EII converter.