Pelican
When I got up to the girls camp a couple of weeks ago I immediately took a little walk around the area to get the lay of the land. I have been to this camp location before. I wanted to see what had changed since the last time I was there. In my looking around I went up the little pond right next to the campsite and I ran into this guy. I had put my camera down, so I turned around and went to where I set it down. I’m afraid that in my rush to get back I may have startled the bird. It took flight right as I came over the ridge. I reacted immediately and raised my camera and started shooting. I didn’t have time to adjust the focus, or the exposure settings. What I had previously set was what I got. As a result the shots are not what I think they could have been.
Lessons Learned
Lesson learned, set up the camera before startling the wildlife. Also it is critical to know how to adjust settings without even thinking. Much more practice will be necessary in order to accomplish the second. The first lesson may be something out of my reach as well.
Maybe in the Future
If only I had been able to spend 45 seconds, I could have adjusted a few critical items. 1. Composing, it would have been amazing to compose this shot in the best way possible. 2. Auto focus option, I simple switch to auto focus tracking could have helped me maintain focus throughout the images. 3. Drive, high speed drive to rapidly shoot successive pictures would have helped. 4. ISO, if I only could have pushed the ISO up a bit, this likely would have been the single most important factor to helping be get sharper, cleaner pictures. Maybe I should look at the camera’s built in auto ISO feature, it could have saved me here.
Enough rambling for today, here are all the shots, from the OK’ish to the ugly. Enjoy?
Is this even a pelican? I tried to look at a few images of pelicans, and I think this is a pretty close match, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve mislabeled this guy.
