Brown pelican

[P-A. Fortin]

Nothing original here, pictures identical to this one are probably taken 60 times per day at La Jolla.

But this one is _mine_

I have to admit that I am not 100% sure about the composition. I kind of tried used the vertical "lines of third" to frame the head/bill. I would have wanted to put the back near the lower line, but in this case the head would have got out of the frame and I did not want to zoom out just for that purpose, in which case anyway the head would not have been close enough to the vertical lines.

Canon 60D, 100-400mm @ 400mm, f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/3200, no flash, manual

No crop. Bit or NR on the background (I have not even noticed the impact), and sharpening on the bird (100% Smart Sharpen 0.2px, USM 50% 0.4px).

Stress and frustration in selecting the feathers on the back of the head probably reduced my life expectancy by 3 years.

[John Chardine]

Hi P.-A.- Love it. Nice and sharp, great light. Love the "twinkle" in the eye. I could never get fed up of seeing such a beautiful subject!

I recropped and ran some NR on the background. I think there was too much negative space behind the bird and ended up going for a vertical or more or less square.

[P-A. Fortin]

Thanks for the comments and repost. I like yours much more. I definitely have to become more picky about noise on the background :)

I like the new crop alot indeed. I had considered a vertical crop (PP. The one I took on the site was too low), but for whatever reason up to now I always limited my crops to remain in a 3:2 ratio, which did not produce results I liked more than the original. I'll consider more "unsual" crops in the future.

No way I could get fed up of watching this bird either. That's why I'm working hard to try to get to La Jolla again in 3-4 weeks. Hopefully those pelicans are still around at that time.

[John Chardine]

P.A.- It's almost magic how effective background noise reduction is on the overall quality of the image.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi P-A., nice work on the pelican - La Jolla is the bomb for getting these shots and you took good advantage of the situation. Color, detail, and exposure are great. That thing about thirds (I refuse to recognize it as a "rule") can't be applied to all images and sometimes you have to give up the notion of an affordable frame and just crop to whatever aspect works best for the image. This is a good topic to discuss though, as I do try to keep my images in some "normal" aspect so printing and framing won't be a challenge, but not all images will cooperate... Good job on the image, John's crop looks great to me.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi P-A, Great color, detail and sharpness. John's crop really takes this to the next level. Congrats on a beautiful image.

TFS,
Rachel

[Troy Lim]

Vertical is the way to go in this image. John's version is good but I would not do a square crop, take off from the left and leave a bit more space on the right.

[John Chardine]

Not sure what you mean Troy. If you take away some space from the left and add it to the right you end up with more or less the same aspect ratio (square).

[Troy Lim]

Not sure what you mean Troy. If you take away some space from the left and add it to the right you end up with more or less the same aspect ratio (square).

John,
What I meant to say is square crop in my opinion does not work well in this case.
You want to show off the bird's details. Here I used 4, 16x20. Ideally, you would want to give it a bit more room when creating this type of shot, not filled up the top and bottom frame so tight. In this crop, the beak is too close to the bottom of the frame but the original shot does not have anymore room.

[John Chardine]

Yep I like that, but you have taken some off the left and the right. Just for the record, IQ has gone up the swanny in your repost but not relevant to the crop discussion.

[Troy Lim]

Sorry about the quality.