Pelican pair

[Jory Griesman]

Taken off the Hooptie a couple of weeks ago with James Shadle. Lots of mangrove in background, foreground, and everywhere. I had tried to carefully select the foreground pelican to then blur/darken the mangroves, but was unsuccessful, so I tried something different, using vignette and blurring with OnOne's Focal Point PS plug-in. Rear pelican was already blurred, this was not done through software. Interested to see what everyone thinks.

[Jory Griesman]

Oops. Forgot the technicals.
Nikon D700, with 600 f/4 lens at f/6.3, 1/1000 sec, ISO 800, at -1 ev

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Jory,
I just went with James myself and was also able to experience this myself. I do like the vignette effect as it looks like a pretty cool portrait effect.....I am not so keen on the BG pelican as it intersect the FG one. I may have preferred the other pelican to be offset.........this would have helped me compositionally. Lets see what others chime in.

[Arthur Morris]

I am with Roman on this one. The juxtaposition does not work well. It would have, and some folks may chuckle at this, been better had the BKGR bird had a good head angle. I like the vignetting idea. Had the birds' heads formed an "X" with the eyes of both visible, that might have been the bomb.

[James Shadle]

Jory,
Like I said, you have a vision.
Ironing out the fine details will help you realize that vision.
Both Roman and Artie offer great advise.

Going through your images, do you have another with better head position on the back bird.

Sometimes a high frame rate will help. The head may turn away and then back again during a small frame rate burst.

James