Brown Pelicans greeting each other

[Arthur Morris]

This image was created on January 15, 2020 at La Jolla, CA. I used the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 332mm) with the blazingly fast AF King, the Sony Alpha a9 II Mirrorless Digital camera body. ISO 3200. Exposure determined by Zebras: 1/500 sec. at f/7.1 in Manual mode. AWB at 8:12am on a cloudy morning. Zone Continuous/tracking (C) AF worked perfectly here.

I’ve seen these spectacular greetings dozens of times. And failed dozens of times; why?

• 1- I did not have enough reach.
• 2- I had a fixed focal length lens in my hands and could not frame the image properly.
• 3- The were numerous extraneous gulls, cormorants, and pelicans either in the way or ruining the backgrounds.
• 4- There were one or more poor head angles.

With the SONY 2-6 and a bit of luck on my side, I was able to overcome the odds against success. And the lightning-fast initial focusing acquisition of the SONY a9 II did not hurt either …

To see more San Diego images created with the 2-6, check out the blog post here.

with love, artie

Learn about joining me in Homer, AK for Bald Eagles here.

See the free Eagle Photogrprahy Lessons video here.