La Jolla Cove Pelican

Gallery: AvianPosted March 10, 2013120 views6 comments

February 15, 2013 at La Jolla Cove in San Diego, CA. Pelicans are prolific in this area as are Cormorants. There is an area where we can get fairly close to capture them taking off, landing, snoozing and in this photo stretching. The water was really that blue. It is not processed in any manner. I apologize to Sandy Richards who always suggests we clone out the droppings. This area was so thoroughly "pelicanized" that not only was every rock covered in guano, but it was impossible to escape the strong odor. When I processed these photos later that day where were staying the visual stimulus caused me to smell the odor as if I were there. Crazy? Perhaps...

D800 Nikkor 200-400mm 400mm ISO 400 f/8 1/1250 manual RAW white balance auto Tripod with Wimberley gimbal processed in CS6 and cropped slightly, sharpened and noise reduced

Comments welcome

Comments

6 comments

Comment posted by Danny on March 10, 2013 at 5:55 PM

Man what a pose that is !!. Excellent timing and sharp as a tack. Love the colours and that is some .... opening

All the best and well done Pat.

Danny.

Registered on November 25, 2003, 165 Posts, 1345 Comments

Comment posted by Howard Cheek on March 10, 2013 at 7:28 PM

Like this a lot Patrick, good sharpness and an interesting open beak pose.
Colors look very nice, great shade of blue in that BG also..
I especially like the arching S-curve line of the comp, well done

Registered on July 24, 2008, 1201 Posts, 10758 Comments

Comment posted by Jim Hackley on March 10, 2013 at 11:15 PM

Excellent pose and ocean blue background. Interesting to see the color variation in Pelicans, nice job in getting this shot.

Registered on September 17, 2009, 302 Posts, 5535 Comments

Comment posted by Nate Chappell on March 11, 2013 at 10:35 PM

Love the head throw and fine sharpness and detail here Patrick, certainly worth having to deal with the smell.

Registered on February 1, 2006, 1158 Posts, 19528 Comments

Comment posted by SandyRichardsBrown on April 19, 2013 at 12:44 AM

Love it! Great colours in the bird and wonderful pose.
Sandy

Registered on November 24, 2003, 3937 Posts, 12909 Comments

Comment posted by Martin Dunn on April 19, 2013 at 2:52 AM

Great pose Patrick. Love the colours which work really well against the background. Did you experiment with different crops? It might look good with a little more space to the left so the pelican is closer to the lower right corner. Just a thought. Great image though.

Registered on February 20, 2013, 198 Posts, 1011 Comments