Where’s he flying? The pelican ain’t telican

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Where’s he flying? The pelican ain’t telican

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 | Photos, Travel |

Couple photography notes. That last picture is interesting. It works in spite of the fact that most of the bird is out of focus, and the reason it works is because the eyes are in focus, and the eyes are what counts. It’s like Tom Geisler said - for pictures of people and animals make sure the eyes are in focus because that’s the first thing our brains are hard-wired to look at.

The other interesting thing is that I was shooting with a polarizing filter. It pretty much lives on my 70-300 zoom lens. I never take it off. As I was panning across the sky to shoot the pelican the polarizer’s angle relative to the sun was changing, which meant that the degree of polarization was changing. That’s why the blue of the sky looks different across the frames. If I ever set out to shoot a sequence like this again I’ll need to remember to remove the polarizer.

4 Comments to Where’s he flying? The pelican ain’t telican

Laughingdog
October 14, 2008

Don’t be so quick to write off the polarizer for something like this. Depending on the distance at which you are shooting, you could be gaining far more from reducing the haze between you and the subject than you are losing in terms of the sky color looking the way you would prefer.

Back when I shot film, I had more than one wildlife shot look like crap from the haze washing out subject.

Jeff
October 14, 2008

I love watching a flock of pelicans go by. I always think they look like flying dinosaurs.

“… for pictures of people and animals make sure the eyes are in focus because that’s the first thing our brains are hard-wired to look at.”

He then added “Unless there are nipples in the picture. Then THEY should be in focus.”

Les Jones
October 14, 2008

LD: I’m sold on polarizers. But if I were setting out a series that would be seen side by side I’d probably not use the polarizer because of the dicontinuity in color. For single pics it doesn’t matter, of course, and the advantage would go to using the polarizer.

Jeff: “I always think they look like flying dinosaurs.” When my wife saw that first picture it reminded her of a pterodactyl. That long head looks really strange from a front angle.