Shooting gulls and terns on a sand bar in the Alafia River....this Brown Pelican made a low pass at close range. I clipped the near wing tips because it was so close so I decided to just cut it off more and place the eye by the rule of thirds...does this work?
1D MKIII
500mm f/4 IS USM
Tripod + Wimberly II gimbal
1/2000
f/8
ISO 400
Manual mode
Evaluative metering
I agree - I think you made lemonade out of lemons here...good for you! In the macro forum we always say if you can't get it all in, crop it tight so it looks intentional. You did that very well here. I would also suggest checking your white balance as the gray skin around his neck area and the shadow on the ground both look like they have more of a blue cast than what might be normal. It might be worth playing with that a bit more.
Nice pano crop as well - with the bird's position and the intentional cropping I think you got the most bang for the buck here!
You could even go tighter Joel, and crop the bird's right wing. If one wing is clipped I think it's better to clip both- at least this is what I do when I clip gannet wings. Agree there is a colour cast, which can easily be removed in LAB colour space. I like the low angle of the image and the feeling it gives of gliding just off the surface. I would consider a little more sharpening too.
I like the improved sharpness of the second image, I just wonder how it would look to crop a little off the left side to have both wings clipped. I really like how the image shows just how low to the ground he was flying.
Gliding Pelican
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