Brown Pelican Diving on Fish

[NorthernFocus]

While wiling away the this winter down here at the beach I've set myself the goal of capturing a sequence of a brown pelican diving. I'm aiming for the entire sequence from level flight to splash, it must be an adult bird, and preferably a dorsal view. And it must be of adequate pixel count to make a 12x36/300ppi metal print or at minimum 16x48/150ppi canvas. I've come close. A couple of days ago I got all but the dorsal view.

My hosting service won't allow me to link an image longer than 960 pixels on the vertical side. So I'm posting a 960 pixel version of the composite and then three separate images of the sequence with more detail. The original image is 3712x11136 pixels which is two D500 frames end to end.

Nikon D500, 500mm f4, 1/1600s, f5.6, ISO200, verticle format@10fps, handheld.

No the entire dive didn't take 0.7s. At the top end before he picked up speed I only used every other frame. The entire sequence SOOC was 11 frames. Plus a couple more of just splash.

Recommend using the light box for viewing.

1) The whole thing.



2) Top



3) Middle



4) Splash

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[MillennialDusk]

Amazing! Those of you with the ability to capture birds in their various stages of flight are the best. I am in the middle of re-reading Scott McCloud's Understanding comics and this composite could illustrate several points he made about the representation of time and motion within the space of a single frame. The sensation is very much like that of watching the bird dive in real life; I always come up with the same question: Did he or she come up with anything this time, or was little birdie's fishing trip as fruitless as mine tend to be?

[Artshot]

Great shot. You seem to have an endless supply of ideas on capturing birds.

[Manfred M]

Wow! Great sequence Dan. The shots and the blend are excellent.

How many tries did it take to get this sequence to work out for you?

[Wavelength]

WOW; really terrific!!! you are successful in your capture!!! were he/she successful in in his/her capture???

[Rita]

This is awesome.

[conkerwood]

The best compliment I can give you is that I am going to steal your idea because I am fortunate enough to have access to pelicans whenever the fancy takes me and this is a fantastic idea. If I am going to be picky and it is only the tiniest of nitpicks the transition between the in focus water on the final shot and the OOF/motion blur water above is too abrupt. A little blurring and blending in P.P. should fix it very easily. Other than that a great sequence.

conkerwood

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks for the comments, folks. I didn't notice whether this guy caught his fish or not. Honestly didn't pay attention as there was a lot of bird activity and I immediately started watching other birds for another opportunity. It's not all that easy to figure if the were successful anyway. They always stay on the water for a few minutes after a dive. For one thing it takes them a couple of minutes to drain the water out of the pouch. Then I'm not too sure that they aren't somewhat addled from the dive. That's an awfully big bird to land on its head at high speed. Anyone who's done any diving knows how hard water can be.

Conkerwood, I'm pretty sure that's just the DOF effect on the water but I'll take another look at it. f5.6 at 500mm makes a pretty flat DOF. As a matter of fact I've altered my technique to shoot these sequences at f8 from now on. Another sequence that would be cool to try is them taking off as they kick/walk on water to get airborne. It's difficult for me to do that in this location because the water is rarely flat enough and they partially disappear in the trough between waves. You do have beautiful pellies over there.

[Donald]

Just fantastic.

Boy, did you achieve your goal. Many congratulations.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks, Donald. But I'm still shooting for that one final detail. I want to catch the bird rotated 90 degrees from this on on entry. For whatever reason these guys always turn their heads to the right when entering the water. So for the best overall view of the bird it needs to be back toward the camera add the end of the dive. Over the past two winters I've shot a couple dozen dives. There is always a glitch somewhere along the way. A couple of frames OOF, a frame or two with wings clipped, head cut off, a wave obstructing the water entry, etc. This one was the closest so far with that one final detail of the dorsal view just before splash down. Following shows what I'm looking for at the end of the dive albeit hopefully with better light on the head.

[Donald]

I think it's great that you are setting such a a high quality threshold. Only by doing this will we get the image that we are satisfied with and, hopefully, others who then see it will agree.

I have a similar thing with landscapes. I am reasonably competent technically and in choosing compositions. What I need though is that the sky, including clouds are right. If they are not, I am more likely to bin the image that and try to make the sky work. Or alternatively, I just don't take the shot at all instead of taking one that I know I will bin at a later stage. In other words, we are both setting the bar high and are not happy until we can jump over it.

[NorthernFocus]

...I just don't take the shot at all instead of taking one that I know I will bin at a later stage....

Yes I do so all the time. My bride is quite perplexed sometimes that I go through the trouble of going out at sunrise/sunset or go to a specific location for a certain bird etc. and come away without having shot a frame. I guess that's a sign of at least some degree of maturity as a photographer.