Brown Pelican Perching, La Jolla [Archive] - BirdPhotographers.net

Steve Gould

01-20-2011, 10:59 PM

This is my first post (second try) to the Avian Forum. I got down to the La Jolla Cove Monday morning at 7 am - a short drive for me because I live in San Diego. :S3:

The action started at about 7:30, right after the sun came up over Mt. Soledad. While I got some nice in-flight images (will post some later), I particularly like this one of a pelican perched with the blue ocean background.

Processed in LR3. Then modest noise reduction with Topaz Denoise 5 and burning in the rocks a little in CS5.

Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 mm IS @ 360 mm, ISO 640, Av, 1/1600, f/7.1, on a tripod

Comments and critiques are most welcome.

Jay Gould

01-21-2011, 12:28 AM

The bird rocks; was the water REALLY that blue? I think i would like it with a softer blue.

Randy Stout

01-21-2011, 05:56 AM

Steve:

Glad you got the image up:bg3:

A classic La Jolla pose, with the brilliant blue water and bright bill pouch.

Sharp, well exposed.

The image framing seems a bit tight for my tastes, and if you have more canvas to play with, I might loosen the crop a bit. Of course, I don't know what else is just out of frame, so perhaps lots of objectionable stuff.

Depending on your feeling on such things, you could consider cleaning some of the white wash off the perch.

A big welcome to Avian, hope to see more.

Cheers

Randy

Jay Gould

01-21-2011, 07:49 AM

Randy knows best! Glad he likes the water. I am looking at it at a country western concert; water on the iPad looks better. Perhaps I need to recalibrate my laptop!

Randy Stout

01-21-2011, 08:20 AM

Randy knows best! Glad he likes the water. I am looking at it at a country western concert; water on the iPad looks better. Perhaps I need to recalibrate my laptop!

Jay, I am not sure about the first statement, but I have seen so many pictures from La Jolla with similar colors, that I think it is pretty accurate.

Steve - did you do any saturation changes?

Cheers

Randy

Jonathan Ashton

01-21-2011, 10:35 AM

Wow you can't ignore this one can you - great colours on the pelican - now this is just a jealous Englishman asking is the water really so blue - I accepted the bird's colours having seen previous images.....but the water????

Steve Gould

01-21-2011, 03:31 PM

Thanks for the comments, and especially thanks to Randy for helping me get the image onto the website.

Here's the image without the +17 Vibrance I originally had added in LR3: it's slightly toned down. That wasn't much Vib, but Adobe still has it a little too heavy-handed with the blues. Anyway, for Jay and Jonathan, suffering in rainy lands, you can see that January in San Diego/La Jolla is blue. :bg3:

Randy, the posts are using full frame. I'm comfortable with the composition, but with effort i could expand all sides with content aware fill in CS5. As for the white wash, I'm happy leaving it natural. I don't mind cleaning things up when they're distracting, but to me the white wash is part of the scene.

Thanks to all for being so welcoming.