Bald eagle in flight

It's just a bit too out of focus. (You have Wilt Chamberlin sized shoes to fill for this type of shot on this site). With that said, I'll bet you had a blast, and it is a nice keepsake.

I think this is a pretty interesting shot. I love the background and the eye contact. It is not tack sharp, but taking great images of flying birds is diufficult. I know from experience. I have many more out of focus images than I do tack sharp images. Keep shooting and pay attention to all the opinions and advice offered here. It will definitely make you a better photographer. Welcome to NPN. Looking forward to more of your posts.

You might want to post a larger image next time. The posting guidelines allow for posting a small and large image. The larger image is more useful for critique purposes.

Welcome, A little OOF and perhaps some of the whites are a little overexposed, but flight shots, especially from a boat are tough. Dave

Welcome - agree with the other comments -- I like the bird positioned right smack dab on the bottom thirds line -- flight shots can be the most frustrating and most rewarding photos -- keep clicking

Welcome aboard, Reiner. This is a fairly decent first post. Catching a eagle in flight from a boat is tough work. Yes it's a bit out of focus, but that's just a matter of practice. You had pretty reasonable settings for what you were shooting, though most people use almost full open aperture for flight shots to get all the shutter speed they can. The -0.33 compensation makes sense, though a bit more is probably necessary for this much contrast (those white heads are bright). Nate Chappell has convinced some of us that manual exposure makes sense when shooting eagles in flight, since the background is so changeable. If you expose to just keep the white head from blowing out in the sun, it works pretty well.

I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Welcome to NPN Reiner, you have gotten some good advice already. To me the crop feels a little awkward with the wing barely clipped on the left, if it were mine I would crop some from the left and top to make the wings cropped in about the same spot. With the large border this image is a little bit small to critique well, you are able to post up to 720 pixels on the long side and there is an optional choice to add a 1200 pixel version when you first post it. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work.