News-Record.com

We published this photo by Nelson Kepley as the centerpiece on our local front yesterday. Someone asked how we shot it. Here's Nelson's take:

"We decided to follow up on a story by Lorraine Ahearn on Feb. 18 about a pair of bald eagles that nested in a pine tree on Lake Brandt. After positioning a tripod mounted lens and camera on the bank of the lake across the water from the nest, I noticed some movement on the surface of the nest that appeared to be the brown wing of a bird extending and retracting.

"Sixty to 90 minutes later an adult bald eagle swooped in, landing on a tree branch to the right of the nest. The bird swiveled his head from side to side and took long looks at the nest. Soon the brown heads of the eaglets began poking higher and higher. They looked around, bending their heads toward their feet. One then extended its wings into the air and I knew at that point I had the best moment. I couldn't overcome all of the technical hurdles of capturing this image and got a grainy photograph that we published.

"Two 2X teleconverters where sandwiched between a Canon EOS 1D Mark II camera body and a 400mm lens yielding the functional equivalent of a 2080mm lens. It’s an unconventional, very crude and undesirable combination of glass but, in a desperate effort to reach out close enough to photograph the birds, it was necessary. The result was a wonderful moment. Rob Brown, director of photography, decided the insight into these beautiful birds’ lives outweighed the technical issues and recommended it for publication."

I don't know diddly about technical issues, but I think it worked exceptionally well.

Nelson's photo from Lorraine's earlier column is here.