Pelican in flight

[Paul Burdett]

Hi all,
Captured this one this morning at Lake Samsonvale, Brisbane.
7Dii,100-400@400mm, 1/3200th sec, f5.6, iso400, manual mode HH. Processed in acr and PS. Cheers.

[David Seymour]

That's a nice Pelican in flight shot, Paul. Good position in frame and wing position, and it's great to have the bird flying so close to the water - Pelicans often do this, and it's good to capture them at it. I've often wondered if due to their size they get some sort of 'ground effect' off the water which saves energy in flight. Exposure looks pretty good to me, and the lack of noise in the shadows suggests you had it close to spot-on in camera at the time. The fast shutter speed has frozen the movement right out to the wing tips, which is often where you see a bit of blur in this type of shot.


Only nit I can pick is a bit of sharpening halo, particularly around the feather tips on the near wing. There are probably various ways of dealing with this - in my relatively limited experience one way to avoid it is to do a careful selection of the bird only early in PP (not too onerous a task with this particular subject), save the selection then at the end of processing do the final sharpening on the bird only (after size reduction to web dimensions) - i.e. the foreground and background don't need sharpening. Apologies if you already did all of that.


Cheers, David

[Bill Dix]

Nice looking flight shot. That eye looks almost cartoon-like. No nits from me.

[Randy Stout]

Paul: Indeed, you have to love that eye! Thoughtful critique by David. I also have the impression that the image needs a CCW rotation. It may in fact be level, but the angle of the bird in relationship to the water gives the impression that it is not level. Might be worth fiddling with it, to see if a better compromise is possible.

Cheers

Randy

[Paul Burdett]

David: Thank you for the feedback. You have a keen eye! Didn't notice the halo, but yes, it's there, due to my sharpening. I've re-edited it and applied only selective sharpening to the head neck area. Looks better to my eye now. I only applied a little colour noise reduction in the wings. Cheers.
Bill: Thank you.
Randy: Another good observation. I forgot to straighten the raw file in acr...fixed in the new edit. My panning technique could improve! Cheers.

[Dorian Anderson]

Repost looks really good, Paul! Lighting is pretty even across the sharply-frozen subject, and I particularly like the splayed primaries at the bottom of the downstroke. Certainly a fun bird!

[Paul Burdett]

Thanks Dorian...much appreciated. Cheers.

[John Mack]

Man your pelicans are so neat looking. Nice how the wings are just above the water. Sharp as well.

[Paul Burdett]

Cheers John.

[gail bisson]

One of your best pics.
My only critique when I saw the OP was that it needed to be leveled.
Otherwise very well done!
Nice and sharp with a great wing position!
Gail

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Gail. Thanks for the kind feedback...cheers!