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Brown Pelican White Background Florida Fine Art Nature Photography

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Brown Pelican photographed in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/800th white background enhanced in Photoshop

Living in St. Petersburg there is ample opportunity to photograph brown pelicans about as close up as you dare.  For the most part, the pelicans themselves are not that bothered about a long lens being pointed at them and seem to tolerate it, though I would not go so far as to say they like it.  I wanted to make some fine art pelican images with white backgrounds by purposefully over exposing the shots when I made them in the field, or in this case the St. Petersburg Pier.  I cleaned up the white backgrounds digitally in Photoshop as needed.

Brown Pelican awash in daylight - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/400thShooting in bright light makes it easy to overexpose the images on purpose by using a large aperture along with a relatively slow shutter speed and shooting into the sun.  

Closeup of a brown pelican - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/1250thSince I was shooting at a focal length of 200mm with a brown pelican standing right next to me, I saw it as an opportunity to photograph details of a pelican, rather than the entire bird, as seen in the above shot focused on the pelican's eye and upper beak texture.  

Brown Pelican One Wing Out St. Petersburg Florida wildlife photography

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Brown Pelican (male) at The Pier in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/7.1 ISO 200 1/800th shutter priorityBrown Pelicans are very curious birds to me.  Here in St. Petersburg Florida you can get up very close to them, basically stand right next to them at some places.  As they are a large bird it feels pretty cool to be able to get so close to a large wild animal.  Plus, they always look like they are looking back at you thinking something (probably do you have any snacks?).  

The male brown pelican above caught my eye because I had never seen a pelican hold out just one wing to dry before like he was doing.  It seemed an odd thing to do when presumably trying to balance on top of a tall piling as he was.  

Vivid brown pelican with purple pelican bokeh St. Petersburg

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Brown pelican with friends at The Pier - Nikon D300 Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/1250thIf you do not have any pelican photographs in your portfolio, you can head to The Pier in downtown St. Petersburg at almost anytime of day and have the opportunity to make one of a number of types of brown pelican images.  The male brown pelican was resting on the deck along with a few friends waiting for a tourist to mount the feeding platform and toss out a few free snacks.

Photographing pelicans at The Pier is also a chance to get very close to a very large bird.  They are used to having people around so you can find yourself being able to get close enough to them for it to start to kind of feel weird.  The pelicans will look you in the eye kind of saying, "what?!"

Downy Woodpecker neighbor on palm tree in St. Petersburg Florida

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Downy Woodpecker on palm tree - one of my neighbors - Nikon D300 Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens @ f/4 ISO 200 1/500thOn weekday afternoons while I am at my desk editing photos or putting up blog posts like this one, I often hear a dull, repetitive sound coming from just beyond the back patio.  The sound signals my neighbor, a downy woodpecker, has returned to work on the three cabbage palms in my backyard.  He (or she) is a small fellow and my longest lens is only 200mm, so I never really thought to try and photograph the woodpecker before.  Well yesterday the downy woodpecker was pecking away a bit lower in the tree and with a bit of cropping, I was able to produce the above shot.  

Downy Woodpecker on cabbage palm in St. Petersburg FloridaIt seems strange doesn't it to see a woodpecker on a palm tree?

A reddish egret at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve St. Petersburg Florida

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Reddish Egret - Boyd Hill Nature Preserve, St. Petersburg FL - this image available for fine art print purchase & commercial license - Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/11 ISO 200 1/250th tripod mounted with cable releaseI spent a recent afternoon in the peaceful Boyd Hill Nature Preserve on a macro themed shoot.  When I do personal shooting I like to give myself a focus, a theme, for that time in order to have a clear photographic goal.  My goal that afternoon was to produce macro images.  However, that did not mean I would just pass up a chance to photograph this reddish egret friend just relaxing on a small bridge to a small island.  I approached the reddish egret carefully by advancing a little, then stopping, never looking directly at the bird, advancing a little more, then stopping.  I did not move for a few moments, then casually set up the shot.  My Nikon D300 was mounted to my tripod with Nikkor AF-S 105mm VR micro f/2.8G lens attached, so I had to get pretty close to be able to fill the frame with the reddish egret.  

I made sure to have calm feelings inside of me as well giving the bird nothing to pick up and feel anxious itself about.  I was able to photograph the bird as close as I wanted and then even picked up my DSLR and tripod and walked past the reddish egret without it flying off.  After I did my exploring of the small island and returned to the bridge, the bird was gone.  

I was glad to be able to share a few moments with this creature and to also be able to photograph it.

Brown Pelican Bird in Flight St. Petersburg Florida Fine Art Nature Photography

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Brown Pelican preparing to dive St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/1250th

Regular followers of my nature posts will know that I am very fond of photographing the many local brown pelicans in my St. Petersburg, Florida neighborhood.  I have not yet achieved my long-term goal of photographing a pelican skimming just over the water, but I was glad to be able to add these images to my pelican portfolio.  On Saturday pelicans were regularly diving out of the sky into the water for fish around The Pier.  Once getting the settings dialed in using shutter priority mode and multi-point focus, it was just a matter of tracking the birds fast enough as they made their dives.

Brown Pelican on an aerial fish survey - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/6.3 ISO 200 1/1250thThis collection of pelican images focuses on the birds as they are about to make a plunge into Tampa Bay hoping to come up with a beak-full of small silvery fish.  Observing a bird's behavior is key to being able to capture the photographs one wants.  I watched where and how they circled and what they did with their wings right before their split second descents.

Brown Pelican wings arced for diving in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/6.3 ISO 200 1/1000thDuring this shoot I also became, at long last, a believer in shutter priority mode.  With the pelicans diving from a bright blue sky background down to the dark waters of Tampa Bay, I knew what shutter speed I needed to freeze their flight, but adjusting the aperture constantly to maintain the correct exposure would have been nearly impossible.  Thus, shutter priority was the best exposure mode to use for these bird-in-flight images.

Brown Pelican hovering before diving in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4.5 ISO 200 1/1250thI also used multi-point focus because I was able for the most part to fill the frame with the pelicans, allowing the 21-focus points to act as a net.  If I could not fill the frame with the pelicans, well, I probably would not even push the shutter, but in that case I would use a single focus point to place right on the bird to distinguish it from any other possible background elements.  In relative close-up shots like these, the multi-focus point setting gave me the best chance of landing a focus point on the subject (pelican) where a single focus point might get lost under a single wing flap.

Visit The Pier for great pelican and bird-in-flight photography opportunities:


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    • Egret takes flight from Shinobazu Pond Ueno Japan

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    Egret takes flight from Shinobazu Pond in Ueno, Tokyo Japan - November 2008 - Nikon D80 with Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens @ f/2.8 ISO 400 1/4000th -0.33 evThis photograph was a mistake.  I could not react fast enough to catch the egret fully in frame as it took off from Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan when out shooting with old friend Can. Mike.  I may have never paid this photograph any attention if not for someone saying they liked it when I showed all the shots of the day to a group of friends.  This was early in my DSLR photography career.  My culling process was not as refined as it is today.  

    Now when I look at the image I get a sense of potential, of Freedom, of the unknown.  All I can see is that the bird is in flight and headed to a place I cannot see.  I wonder if it was late in starting its migration?  Now living in Florida, it is a place birds migrate to about this time of year.  It would perhaps be a nice bookend to make an image of an egret landing in water.  

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