Trip Report: Bald Eagles 2018

We had an awesome exploration of Kachemak Bay in Alaska this year photographing Bald Eagles. The weather was perfect in late March and we were able to photograph literally hundreds of different birds around the various inlets, bays and passages in and around Seldovia, Alaska. We had two days of light overcast and two days of beautiful sunny weather on the water with no precipitation.

While many photo groups tend to explore the more “known” areas around Homer we prefer the quieter, wilder scene in Seldovia across the bay – it’s more of a wilderness experience without the hustle and bustle. Gorgeous mountain back-drops to frame our Bald Eagles compositions, a plethora of Sea Otters, Mountain Goats a good variety of sea-ducks filled our days. On this trip we stay at a quaint little harbor-side hotel in Seldovia which serves up excellent food daily in between Eagles sessions and then each day head out on our privately chartered landing craft to patrol the forested bays in search of Bald Eagles. And…there really isn’t much search involved. The Eagles are everywhere this time of year! You can expect to photograph Eagles in a variety of scenes, in-flight and in awesome aerial maneuvers. Not only that but you can come away with excellent full-frame images using a 70-200mm lens! It’s always good to bring a variety of long lenses on a remote trip like this for various situations but the perfect lens for this trip is something fast, light and easy maneuver and we are able to get so close to the Eagles using our skiff that you don’t need as much telephoto reach as one might think. I’ve actually decided in future years I won’t be bringing my 600mm prime – too heavy and unwieldy!

Below are the first round of images from this trip – I took about 5000 frames so more to come in a later post!