Pellican Landing

[Barry Pressman]

My first post...shot at Fernandina near Ft. Clinch State Park. Canon 20D, 100-400 mm, f8, 1/400 sec, 400mm and ISO 200. Used CS3 to remove most of background. I like to find unusual activities that normally are not observed. Also converted to B&W from raw file.

[Jim Neiger]

Welcome Barry,

I like the way you've captured the pelican doing something, in this case scratching, action in an image usualy adds interest. I also think this was a good image to show in B&W since it doesn't have much color anyway. I wish the Pelican's head was turned more towards you giving us a better look at the head and eye of the Pelican. I am not sure what you meant by removing most of the bg. Are you sayiong you cropped out most of the bg or painted over it with black, or something else?

[Barry Pressman]

Welcome Barry,

I like the way you've captured the pelican doing something, in this case scratching, action in an image usualy adds interest. I also think this was a good image to show in B&W since it doesn't have much color anyway. I wish the Pelican's head was turned more towards you giving us a better look at the head and eye of the Pelican. I am not sure what you meant by removing most of the bg. Are you sayiong you cropped out most of the bg or painted over it with black, or something else?

The Pelican was really trying to land and nearly lost balance. He apparently missed landing on both feet and then struggled to stay up. I painted black after the B&W conversion to eliminate the distractions.

[Lana Hays]

Welcome Barry,
Jim has already provided some good advice such as the action adding interest, head turn, and turning this into a BW image. It makes sense to blacken the BG since you turned it into a BW image. I'm still on a dark monitor so this may not be the case but the appearance is that the perch is not attached to anything.....and I get the feeling that it and the bird are just "floating in space". I think whatever it was attached to may have been removed when you changed the BG. I think I'd want to bring it back or find some way to ground the bird/perch.

[Mark Hilliard]

Nice image. Since you spent so much time in PS, why not carry it a little further and extend the rail road tie so that it fads off into the distance or extends out of the frame? It would add a sort of legitimicy to the image and vastly improve it! I REALLY like the capture of the pelican!

[Alfred Forns]

Great idea going to B&W Normally I'm not a fan of birds in this fashion Would suggest to bump the mid tone contrast a bit to make it pop a bit more I like it a lot !!!!