White Pelican

[BillTyler]

Feeding at Palo Alto Baylands. Thisi is one of a pair that spent some time swimming back and forth in front of me, dipping their beaks sideways into the water and displaying their amazing pouches. I removed a couple of avocets from the background using Photoshop.

Canon 50D, 100-400 at 330 mm f/10 1/250 ISO 400

Comments and criticism welcome.

Thanks,

Bill

[Lance Peters]

Hi Bill - love the translucent pouch.

Looks to me like there is a bit of a blue colour cast to the image - Partly because it is backlit and the front of MR Pelican is in the shade - thinking that seeing as it was late afternoon - it might have looked a bit like this???

I would try and lighten the face area around the eye a tad - the real point of interest here is that translucent pouch I would have tried to go a lot tighter if you had the means and shot the head/neck and filled the frame as much as I could have, this would also have minimized the BG a lot as well.

Keep them coming :)

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Bill,
I like the composition and capture...the techs. have been covered and good advise given by Mr. Peters...I personally would have liked to have seen a little more room on the top...keep them coming...:cool:

[Bob Miller]

Bill....Love that pouch. I agree with lance ...if you can get closer and fill the fram with just his head ...this shot would be a killer image. As is I like the composition and the repost

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Bill,

Great shot, if you filled the frame more by extending the zoom, the close up might have strengthened the image (always easy to say after the fact). Not sure about the crop, but more at the top would provide a better balance, I agree with Gus here. Always consider opening the aperture and increasing shutter for sharp crisp details. Sometimes nice when shutter speed exceeds focal length - nice shot, I really like it.

[Arthur Morris]

Love the backlit pouch and the bird. The water is not bad. The mud is butt-ugly.... I like Lance's suggestions but his color work was a big over-correction. The blue cast actually makes the mud look a bit better.

[BillTyler]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. The original post does have a bluish cast, but then the light was bluish, too, and the real look was somewhere between Lance's post and mine. I do take the point about zooming in more, which would also have reduced the ugly mud. There were actually a pair of these pelicans swimming back and forth in front of me, feeding, for perhaps 15 or 20 minutes.

Thanks again for the help,

Bill