I enjoy wildlife photography, but I have never been particularly adept at it. More times than not, my wildlife pictures have insufficient depth of field, are slightly out of focus, or some other mistake that makes my images less than satisfactory. But, every now and then, everything comes together for me to get a photograph I am happy with. And, this image is one of those times.
My wife and I had driven to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to visit my parents one Christmas. One morning, my dad had to run to the store to pick up a few last minute items, and my wife and I joined him for the trip. The errands completed, we headed back to my parents’ house. Along the way, we took a small tour and ended up at the Ocean Springs Harbor marina.
Turning into the marina, I spotted several pelicans swimming in the water. I parked the car and grabbed my camera, tripod, and 400mm lens. There were several boats moored making it difficult to get clean photographs. In addition, the pelicans appeared to be a bit camera shy because, every time I was about to press the shutter button, they would seem to paddle themselves behind one of the boats.
After ten or fifteen minutes of those silly pelicans playing hide and seek with me and my camera, I decided it was time to move on. Plus, in my excitement to photograph these birds, I had left my dad and wife in the car. I realized they were probably as bored as I was frustrated.
As I began to pack up my equipment, something out the corner of my eye caught my attention. Turning, I saw this pelican calmly standing on the top of a piling. Aiming my camera at him, I fully expected him to take off and fly away. But, he just stood there without moving. It seemed as if he was standing there posing and just waiting for me to take his picture, so I didn’t want to disappoint him.
I wanted to minimize any chance of blur caused by movement of either the pelican or my camera, so I selected a shutter speed of 1/1250 of a second. Raising my ISO to 400 allowed me to use an aperture of f/5.6, which was the widest aperture of the 400mm lens. Given the distance between me, the pelican and the background trees, I knew the depth of field would be sufficient to keep the entire bird sharp while allowing the background to be completely out of focus.
But, the distance between me and the pelican also meant the pelican would not be as large in the frame as I would have liked even with a 400mm lens. My only choices to deal with this was to either move closer to the bird or to crop the image later in Lightroom.
I don’t often crop my images, but I will do it if I feel it is the best option I have for getting the photograph I want. In this case, moving closer posed a number of issues. First, if I got too close to the bird, he would likely get nervous and fly away leaving me nothing to photograph. Second, moving closer would have reduced my depth of field possibly to a point where the entire pelican would not be sharp. Finally, a closer location would have changed the angle of view, and I would have been shooting upward more than I would have wanted.
Because of these concerns, I decided the option to crop the image later was the better course of action, and this was the result: a picture of a posing pelican.