Pacific Brown Pelican fly-by

[Dieter Schaefer]

D200, Nikkor 80-400 at 240mm, f/5.3, 1/1600s, ISO360, spot metering. Cropped slightly after leveling the horizon.

This pelican obliged with a nice close fly-by. All our local beaches are south-facing - hence light is always a problem

[Gus Cobos]

Very nice composition, love the colors...:D

[Stephen Stephen]

Dieter I like the pose on this banded bird. The whites on the head look a little warm on my monitor.

[Leroy Laverman]

Nice one Dieter. - I wonder if that's the same banded bird I got a shot of. I'd almost be tempted in this shot to composite this with a different background. The horizontal bands of color (sky, waves, water etc...) pull my eye from the bird.

[Dieter Schaefer]

Leroy, I am actually torn with regard to the background - like the context it gives but it also is distracting. Wondering what others think?

[Dave Shaw]

In my humble opinion I think removing this background would seriously degrade the image. With the background the viewer has a great sense of the the bird, its habitat, the sea, even the wind in which its flying. To remove it you'd just end up with another shot of a flying pelican on a bland background. Birds do not live out of context, something we so often forget in our images. Very nice shot. If I had one place for improvement it would be the burnt out areas in the waves and maybe a touch in the head. 1/3 of a stop of exposure compensation might have resolved most of it.

Best,
Dave Shaw
www.wildimagephoto.com

[Leroy Laverman]

I guess I should clarify - I like the sea as a background but perhaps a different pattern of sea/waves/sky might be less distracting. Maybe a wider angle shot of waves that is sufficiently OOF? Just tossing up ideas.

[Dieter Schaefer]

Thanks for all the input. Merged the image with a second RAW conversion (exposed more for the highlights), opacity around 30%. Also blurred the surf with Gaussian blur at 8 pixels.
There is indeed a very small patch on the forehead that is overexposed - and I agree, a -1/3 EV correction would have taken care of that - without unduly darkening the rest of the bird.

[Leroy Laverman]

The softer background is less distracting. Nice work with the forehead as well.