When I led a photo tour to Mongolia a couple of years ago, the focus in large part was the eagle hunters. I also loved photographing their golden eagles, of course, and this was a chance to get some great flight shots. The eagles are trained to hunt, and then after 6 years or so the birds are released back into the wild. Their behavior, then, was entirely natural. On this day, thin clouds somewhat obscured the sun, and when this eagle flew past the bright background, I knew there was no way to expose such that I captured detail in the feathers as well as detail in the very bright sky. The contrast was too extreme. I didn't want merely a silhouette of the bird, so I had to use a different approach. To re-create what I saw, I had to take two shots: One of the golden eagle soaring above me and a second one for the partially dimmed sun. Then, in Photoshop, I put them together. This composite represents what I saw. My settings for the eagle shot were 1/2000, f/8, 400 ISO, and I used a Canon 300mm f/2.8 telephoto for the shot.
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