The Poser

[Arthur Morris]

On the San Diego IPT this beautiful bird flew in and landed right in front of us on one of the nicer isolated rocks and then performed a variety of behaviors for us for about an hour before departing. La Jolla, CA.

Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC (handheld at 246mm) with the EOS-7D. ISO 320. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/1000 at f/7.1.

Check out today's Blog post here: www.BIRDSASART-Blog.com to read my comments on 7D image quality and my choice of focusing pattern for birds in flight.

TIP: From ABP II and repeatedly on the San Diego IPT: when photographing a preening bird the #1 concern should be to make the image when the bird's head is perfectly square to the back of the camera....

ps: I added a slice from another image to the bottom of the frame here as I had inadvertently clipped this bird's toes.

pps: I love these birds in breeding plumage.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Looks great from Down Under Artie. I checked all histograms and it appears that the levels are perfect yet it looks really bright. Why would that be?

love the pose of course and that red bill pouch is so pretty.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Akso. Not sure. With the calibration strip looking good it looks fine from here... We will see what others have to say.

[Keith Bauer]

Great pose, nice details. I too thought that it looked bright. Here's my take at toning it down. This may not have been your intent at all, so if this isn't it..... never mind :) Also cleaned up a bit of the white wash on the rock

[Markus Jais]

Beautiful bird and great shot. I love the colors in the bird's head. They go very well with the blue BG.

Markus

[Arthur Morris]

Great pose, nice details. I too thought that it looked bright. Here's my take at toning it down. This may not have been your intent at all, so if this isn't it..... never mind :) Also cleaned up a bit of the white wash on the rock

Thanks Keith, but is seems that we have some sort of browser/color space issues going on: your repost is darker but the reds are ghastly over-saturated, and I mean ghastly. And the color balance is off as well but I do appreciate the effort. I am sure that it looks better on your computer than on mine.

[Keith Bauer]

Thanks Keith, but is seems that we have some sort of browser/color space issues going on: your repost is darker but the reds are ghastly over-saturated, and I mean ghastly. And the color balance is off as well but I do appreciate the effort. I am sure that it looks better on your computer than on mine.

Yeah, something happened in the post. Your "original" was in the Adobe RGB color space so I kept it that way. Here's another post with just the reds de-saturated. Sorry about the first one.

[Michael Zajac]

Artie, I'm going with the orig. post. Nice preening pose and comp. Feather detail is nice.

[Gal Shon]

I prefer the orignal post, as akos said, I also think the white are a bit too bright.
I wish the image was bigger...

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I am agreeing that it was too light :) Did I over-do it here?

[Gal Shon]

Your repost is spot on for me.

[Myer Bornstein]

The repost looks more natural to me the original reds was definitely to bright on my computer

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

I think your last post is perfect Artie. What time of the day did you photograph this beauty?

[Ilija Dukovski]

Now that is one great looking bird. On my monitor the pouch actually was better on #1.
The sky is better on the re-post, I'd vote for toning down the sky on #1 selectively and that is all.
I love the plumage texture and details. Great one.

[Arthur Morris]

Akos, Thanks. I thought that it was later in the morning but the EXIF says 8:35 am. I guess that we got there really early :)

[Morkel Erasmus]

repost rocks Art-man. great work on rebuilding the bottom end after the cut-off :)
which species of pelican is this?

[Stu Bowie]

Great detail Artie, and great pp work too. Light, exposure and colours, all look good from here.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks all and Morkman. The bird is the California race of Brown Pelican. One of my faves.

[Morkel Erasmus]

YAW. it is a beautiful bird.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Artie...loved the pose and the eye contact. repost definitely is better. The California race definitely has some killer colors.