This is a beautiful stellar eagle I photographed on the same photo tour when I captured the snow monkeys on the previous post. Stellar eagles are particularly striking with their bright yellow beak and feet. Normally when photographing birds in flight -- or birds about to take flight -- I use a shutter speed of 1/3200. However, slower flying birds like eagles, hawks, osprey, egrets, herons, macaws, etc. don't require such a fast shutter because their large wings don't flap with the same rapidity as smaller species of birds. For this shot, I used 1/2000th of a second. My other settings were f/11 and 800 ISO. When photographing wildlife, I'm always happy with diffused light from an overcast sky. The images are devoid of harsh contrast and they always look good. Sunrise and sunset lighting is beautiful, of course, but it has to strike the subjects from an ideal angle. With a diffused light, the direction of light is never an issue.
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