First Post - Pelican pic

[Mo Manx]

I live in a tiny town on the Mississippi River. There isn't much to do here, but Lock and Dam 20 creates a great attraction for waterfowl--dead fish. I took hundreds of bald eagle photos this winter. Now the American White Pelicans are moving through. Took this one this afternoon from my car with an FZ30 & TCON-17. Cropped about 50%, no PP. Comments welcome.

[genece]

very nice ..maybe a lttle overexposed but nice.

[Mo Manx]

PP brings out more colors, but overexposure on the hind feathers is hard to eliminate. White birds seem to be a problem, as it's the same with bald eagle heads. When you have enough exposure to bring out feather detail, you blow out highlights. And today was overcast, with fairly even lighting.

[dissembled]

I would suggest less crop, more watah.

Negative space is always good.

[tim11]

I noticed some difference on Mississippi's species and the Down-Under type. This is the type of pelican I'm familar with.

[Mike63]

All pelican's are so ugly that their cute.:)

[Mo Manx]

The more I see them, the more I like them. And the Australian species is a beauty. Since we're having a pelicanfest, here's another: the Eastern Brown Pelican, which I photographed last December in Florida. It's a good news story, a species once endangered, now completely recovered and delisted.

[tim11]

I admit I'm ignorant about pelican... And until I saw Mo Manx's post, I thought pelicans were all the same. In fact, ever since I took up photography more seriously since 6 months ago, I started to see things that I had never bothered to notice before.
Let's hope for pelicanfest so I can be more educated about the many species in the world. I'm not sure about which one is 'beauty', all you can say is the Aussie species have less make-ups and neat hair cut. :)
As I said, I have only seen one type of pelican but that's only one region of Australia and I'm not sure if there are any different species elsewhere in other states of Australia.
My previous photo was taken at Terrigal, up North about 2 hours drive from Sydney.
This is the same one taken from a zoo in Sydney:
http://www.geocities.com/tim11photos/animals/20051122_012pelican.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/tim11photos/animals/20051122_013pelican.jpg

Wild pelicans, (cropped and lots of noise) taken at Wollongong, about 1 hour drive South of Sydney:
http://www.geocities.com/myfirstshots/animals/20050925_060stork.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/myfirstshots/animals/20050925_076stork.jpg