Anticipation
Mongolia 2014
The hunter appears tense as he decides the perfect moment to remove the hood from his eagle.
In order to heighten the drama of the moment, I converted this shot to black and white. I used a dark vignette around the borders and kept the face of the man and the bird’s head lighter. I wanted to make your eye go to the man’s face and then drop to the eagle’s head…a diagonal line.
All these ideas came after the shot, when I was at my computer. On the day I shot this, I was standing on a steep, scree covered mountain side. Even a slight shift of my weight caused me to slide a bit. I held my camera in the vertical position which exhausted me and worse gave me no leeway when the bird launched. Next time, I’ll use a horizontal format and crop it to get a vertical. I’m completely happy with this shot though…the man, wearing his fox-fur coat and hat, is more interesting to me than the eagle.