Crested Serpent Eagle - Juvenile

It's always a good thing to have a longer reach when you're shooting wildlife or birds. But, sometimes you find yourselves in a situation where fitting the subject in the frame becomes a big challenge and with fixed lenses it's you who needs to zoom in and out.

Shooting birds isn't an easy job:

- you got to be patient since they can fly and you can't!
- you need to maintain the right distance, too close and you'd have lots of difficulty framing the bird (like in this case)
- you need to figure out which is the best angle for the light and most importantly the background

This is a full-frame shot of this beautiful bird, probably one of three the shots where I could capture it from head to tail and get a decent background too. I wished to get some more space on the top and bottom but a different angle also meant a changed background and even though I do have other shots where the bird is comfortably placed in the frame, the background isn't as contrasty. So even though this is tightly framed, I still picked this one as my favorite from the series.

Shooting from the safari jeep also adds to the complexity as you need to figure out whether shooting handheld is a better deal than using the bean bag since the angles differ significantly. I had to shoot this handheld since the beanbag wasn't really giving me an angle to get the background right.

Tech Specs:
Canon 1D Mark IV + Canon 600mm F4 L IS
Shot at 600mm, 1/800s, F4 and ISO 800