Brown Pelican bathing

[Sid Garige]

Today morning from Alafia Banks.

Intended purpose of this image is to show brown pelican bathing. For this my objective was to choose a shutter speed that captures the water splash and droplets in the air and at the same time convey the sense of wing movement with blur. I started with shutter speed 1200 and gradually reduced it to 650 until I achieved that just enough wing blur with water splash. Since subject was located far away from the background change in DOF with aperture did not effect much.

Canon 7D
500mm F4
ISO 640 F8 1/640

[Stan Cunningham]

Your light was excellent as well. Very nice with the blur, as a biologist I like the pictures that "explain" what the animal is doing.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Love how you get the bird eye to be sharp while the feathers and water appear to be blurred. Also like the low angle and the explosion of water really make it for me. Great image, TSF.

[Rachel Hollander]

Sid - great pov and action captured. I like the blur. Color looks great too.

TFS,
Rachel

[John Chardine]

I REALLY like this image Sid. Very well done and a great explanation of the thought process behind it. The trick here I think is to capture the blur to convey movement but to also render the eye nice and sharp, like it is. Love the warm light too.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Sid, you certainly achieved your goal and thanks for sharing your method and thought process. When an image is well thought out like this it always shows in the final product. Did you consider taking the burn tool in highlights mode to the yellow on the head? I like it as presented and just wondered if that would add more attention to the eye. Well done! I don't know if it's a real birding term, but I always call this "thrashing".

[Sid Garige]

Did you consider taking the burn tool in highlights mode to the yellow on the head? I like it as presented and just wondered if that would add more attention to the eye.

I like it as it is. Agree yellows on the head or little hot, but considering the light quality I wanted to keep it that way. I dont think it has any thing to do with eye. Like your signature says ""It's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see." I see the whole image as a single entity not as a combination of individual elements for this image.

[Troy Lim]

Stunning Sid, I got some of my nice pelican shots from the same spot