What is particularly unique about this picture is that I took it with a 14mm lens! If you have used a seriously wide angle lens before, you know how close I had to get to the bird to capture a frame-filling shot like this. This is not cropped at all -- it's full frame. In Walvis Bay, Namibia, my photo tour group and I take a boat ride at dawn into the bay to photograph African white pelicans, sea lions, and other wildlife. Our guide throws small fish to the birds, and they come within very close range. I was probably 2 or 3 feet from this pelican when I took the shot. With birds that have huge wing spans, you don't need a shutter speed as fast as when photographing small birds because the wing beats are slower. Still, to make sure the wings were tack sharp, my shutter was 1/1250. I used an aperture of f/11, even with an extreme wide angle, to make sure I had enough depth of field. The ISO was 640.
0 Comments