Random Photo Friday: Timing is everything!

Finding yourself in the right place, at the right time, WITH your camera AND a zoom lens, is a rare and wonderful thing indeed!

Basically never have the photographic stars aligned in my world, such that I'm casually wandering along, armed not only with my DSLR camera, but also kitted with its 300mm VR zoom lens and ready to go at a moment's notice.....when the absolute perfect moment just happens! But - holy cow - did it ever, just a couple of days ago. And here is the result:

It's not so much that he'd just caught a fish, but rather his massive talons
were so deeply embedded into a dead, half-mangled fish, that it made
take-off and landing a right bugger.

Let's just say, it was a gorgeous, sunny and mild (13C) Spring day and I decided to walk down to the local 'doggy beach' past Spanish Banks, to try my hand at a few more candid doggy shots, having got a few good pics down at the Kits Beach/Marine Museum doggy area the day before.

Lorne and I have made the 90-minute drive up to Brackendale (near Squamish) to see the eagles (Dec-Jan) a few times but we have yet to experience anything nearly this amazing. In fact, the past couple of visits to Brackendale, we counted only a handful of far-off eagles, nothing that you could confidently pinpoint on a photograph, other than a white-headed blob. At Spanish Banks I crept down to the edge of the tide and literally got within 30-40ft of this incredible adult eagle.

It's safe to say, I NEVER would have expected to get these pics, least of all during a casual afternoon walk at the beach, just a kilometre or so from home!

So incredibly majestic and powerful.
I still cannot believe I got this shot. 

What's more, when you go to Brackendale there are lines of avid photographers with their big guns - some seriously enormous zoom lenses and expensive high-tech gear - I always feel so amateur. In this instance, I was surrounded by people armed only with Iphones, so for once I looked like the pro! (Thanks in part to Lorne, for the upgraded zoom lens he gave me for Christmas 2012.)

The main challenge was zooming in just enough to get the shot but not so much that you risk the long lens creating blur from being handheld, even with built-in VR. Not to mention that whole depth of field thing. Of course I still see a little softness to them, but on the whole I'm very happy with what I got.

Naturally I posted these pics of Facebook too and got some wonderful (ego-boosting) feedback and I've decided to submit a couple of them to the local media, mainly just to get the coverage.

But seriously, what a unique and A-M-A-Z-I-N-G experience! And I could have probably taken lots more photos too, were it not for these two rambunctious goofs who came tearing down the beach and into the water, thinking they had a chance at catching Mr. Eagle.