Patrick Booth, The Calling (ANIMALS 2024)

Web:

https://lazydaze.photo/

1050 mm @ 1/6000 sec f 8 Iso 2500 Shot handheld from boat. This shot of a female Adult White-bellied Sea Eagle calling to one of its young as it flys overhead out of shot is a reminder to the viewer of an ongoing connection to family. This connection is prevalent right through the animal kingdom and varies from the deeply social to the almost nonexistent. Sea Eagles are long lived (up to 30 years or more) and usually mate for life which can see breeding pairs producing offspring for over two decades. Living on the Clarence River in Northern NSW, there is no escaping these majestic large birds of prey as they are prevalent from the source way up into the foothills of the northern tablelands in Tabulam, right down to the mouth at Yamba and Iluka. A day very rarely goes by when I don’t have some sort of encounter cruising up and down the mighty Clarence and on this occasion it was the female of the river mouths breeding pair calling out to one of its young flying overhead with its loud resonating honking call. This shot was taken on the eastern tip of Freeburn Island only 500 metres or so away from the nest located on the north western side of the same island. Shooting these birds in colour has been one of the most challenging endeavours in bird photography for me personally, as the colours of the birds get washed out easily and don’t blend well with many of the skies and backgrounds in their habitat, so they naturally become perfect subjects for black and white. This particular image was chosen over a bunch of others because of the clean subject’s posture, its open beak is tack sharp with subtle catchlight in the eye. I have cropped the subject in the frame facing upward with space and the centre line going directly through the birds eye and chose a high contrast blue filter that really accentuates the bird’s features well giving it that pop that guides the viewer directly to the eye and open beak.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.