Aerial Battle of Eagles

I too, fight for fish.

Looks fake. Not saying it is, just that it looks so.

My sentiment exactly, Mr. Taco.

It's really quite surreal watching eagles do cartwheels in the air like that on TV.

Fake.

That's a frakkin' photograph? At my first glance I immediately thought "Wow, cool painting." But if National Geographic is giving it credo, it's an amazingly cool capture. My cousin is in their photog league; I'll have to ask him about this.

Yea... I gotta go with Photoshop here. Each eagle is lit from a different angle.

No, they're all lit from the same angle. The light is coming from the left hand side and casting shadows on the right. The wing of the leftmost bird seems to also be casting a shadow on the head, but not the feet of the bird on the bottom of the photograph. That would make the light come from somewhere near top left, which would give a mid to late afternoon or early to mid morning time frame to the picture. That assumes the photo is oriented with the ground to the bottom. You can even see the light shining through the translucent parts of the leftmost bird's wing feathers.

woaOW!

I think National Geographic can spot from the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in their time that this is not one.

this is a render. period. model of that eagle is widely available in 3d models online shops. i can't belive some of you have a doubt, this is a baldy realized hoax, whoever belives is is a noob of graphics and photography

even if this wasn't rendered, this would still be a sucky photo.

Why we must call every photo a fake? We all know that this kind of action happens all the time but we must be very lucky to catch them on photo. And how can you judge with a 400x400 jpeg sucky compression format? Plus, you see blur because the shot wasn't taken with a macro lense.. Congratz Mr. Fernandez!

No its not fake. There's a site called "Fake or foto" (yes its spelled like that) it tests you on cgi or photos. I scored a perfect score. Besides i've seen video like this before.

I believe that it's real since it's on National Geographic, but it does look like a very poor photoshop job. Perhaps it's just cause we're not used to seeing eagles doing acrobatics. I don't think it looks like CG at all, though.

its not a fake, the glow you see around the eagles is commonly seen in HDR photography when people combined extremely contrasting shots... this guy was straddling the boundary of surreal HDR photography and HDR that just brings out the little details.

I'm sure national geographic takes the time to verify the reality of their photos. The rest of the winners were amazing also.

Shots look completely fake.

May not be, but I won't be suprised if we see something in the news in a few weeks about how it is fake.

The photographer that took this picture, Jose Hernandez told me about the comments on this site. Someone told him and he took a look at some of the pitiful comments. Some of you should be ashamed to make such adamant statements like you are experts that this image is a fake, taking away from the happiness and recognition Jose received from National Geographic. I was there with him when he took this shot. If you don't believe it is real take a look at the link below. My shot was 1 second after his, so now I guess we both used 3d models. Blue Skies.
http://www.kencongerphotography.com/gallery/4437021_ezVNr#265154293_YtDum

I've known Jose for 25 years and it's a real photo.

The Eiffel Tower photo from the link is breathtaking!!