I got this lucky shot by being at the right place and time.
The flock approached me very quickly and went over me just as I was taking my first breath. I love the fact that one of the pelicans was looking at me at the moment of capture.
Nikon D300
Manual Mode
1/500 sec shutter
F/11
Nikkor 70-200 @ 200 mm
Jan 2011 at Merritt Island NWR
Minimal post processing.
Time of day: 10 am
Matrix metering
Circular polarizer in place
ev= 0
Last edited by Reza Gorji; 01-21-2011 at 06:45 AM.
Yes it is neat that the one bird appears to be looking down at you. I am often struck by how much looking around birds do!
You have two very similar subjects here- the repetition makes for an interesting image. The problem of course in this case is that one of the birds has a clipped wing. One idea might be to eliminate the clipped bird (it has poor eye contact anyway) and crop a horizontal of the left hand bird. To include enough space on the right you may need to remove some of the other bird by cloning. Anyway maybe give that a try. Also I would sharpen a bit more.
Reza, I agree with John. There are a very few times when a bird with a clipped wing "works" but here I think you really needed both of them in the frame. I'd clone out the one bird and stick with the one that's looking at you. You can also gain a little more detail in the underwings if you lighten the image with a slide of the midtone slider in levels or with a shadow/highlight adjustment layer.
Nice in flight shot. The one pelican is good enough to make this shot on it's own. It will be a good image needing only a little lightening underneath.
Mike, Julie and John:
Thank you for your comments. I appreciate that very much.
If I clone one bird out, I can see only one bird in a void; is that not a concern? I mean isn't it better to have another bird in the pic as a reference point versus having only one in flight?
The original pic has the wing clipped because it was the best I could do at the time of capture.
I have not done any sharpening as I am not good with that at all.
Reza
Here's what I was thinking about as one option. The important part of the modification was to re-crop. I also lightened up the face and underside of the bird a bit, and sharpened.
Last edited by John Chardine; 01-21-2011 at 09:40 PM.
Does that make more sense now, Reza? The way John tilted the bird in the frame at an angle and gave him room in front of him to "virtually" fly into are two great points to remember in bird photography. If you get multiple birds in an image and they are close enough that you can see their faces the head angles on each bird become more and more important because the viewer wants to connect with all the birds instead of just the one. It's also "okay" to clip the wings of a bird for an image but then you need a tight, close crop and they all (or both) need to be clipped so it looks intentional.
Hope that helps! And don't be discouraged...you learned a lot here on this image and you'll continue to grow as a photographer because of it!
Yes it makes sense. I really like and appreciate the instructions on this forum. It definitely making me improve my work. Its a life long process. Since we are not supposed to put 2 pics into one thread for critique, I will provide a link to the line of pelicans that came to me on that cold and crispy morning and lead to the picture. The wing crop was not intentional. It was the image at the moment. I don't think I will ever forget that moment. My heart still races when I just think about it.
Pelicans in Flight
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