Midflight
Brown Pelican in Midflight, Elkhorn Slough, Moss landing.
“Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His bill holds more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week.
But I’m darned if I know how the helican.”
Dixon Lanier Merritt
(1879-1972)
Interesting Fact – The brown pelican is the state bird of Louisiana. (Courtesy: Wikipedia)
On a technical note: Vikas asked “all your recent pics are at f/5.6 . shooting in av mode”.
For the complete series of images from Elkhorn Slough, I was shooting at aperture priority mode, wide open. The thinking was that I want to freeze motion and get the sharpest images I can. Hence lens wide open, beacuse of which I ended up sacrificing depth of field . I did this stupid thing of using evaluative metering. Next time, I’ll go the spot metering way. Hopefully, that will help me with the highly reflective otter coats.
Technical Details:
Exposure: 1/750sec at f/5.6
Focal Length: 190mm
ISO: 100
WB: Daylight
Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 IS USM
Time: 9.42 AM
Date: November 3, 2007
Yet again you impress me with your skills. This is a very nice picture.
Btw, I think, the lack of DoF is coming to your aid here. What carries this picture is the fact that the bird is in focus and the background is not. I would shoot even faster if possible. As I see more photos from your trip I am more convinced to buy the 70-300 lens.
Comment by sreekar — November 12, 2007 @ 10:59 am
great freeze frame .. were you panning as well?
the wing angles are odd .. usually see both the wings spread out or vertical ..
and the f/5.6 was good thinking ..
limeric is awesome too
Comment by vikas — November 12, 2007 @ 3:50 pm