Wild Bird Trust photographers of the week

I have one picture among the Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs on National Geographic’s NewsWatch this week. It is always a real pleasure when I get a picture among the 25.

This time my picture is from my Dalmatian Pelican workshop at Lake Kerkini in Greece. It was a really nice workshop where you had the possibility to really try different approaches to get a special picture, if that is possible.

My picture is actually taken with a borrowed lens, thank you Frode, a fixed 28mm as I couldn´t fit my 24-70mm in the camera bag as I had my two camera houses, a borrowed 400mm/2.8 and my a 70-200mm/2.8.

I liked this picture as soon as I checked it in the camera. I was sitting in the back of the boat keeping tabs of both sides. On the left side we were feeding the Dalmatian Pelicans and I would lie if I said it was anything else than chaos there. On the right sight it was much calmer and this picture is taken in that direction.

I used my old and trusty companion the Nikon D700 for this photo. I held the camera just above the water’s surface trying to get the focus just in front of the first Pelican. I wanted this as I used a small aperture of F/9 which means more of the frame will be in focus.

Of course it was a gamble as I didn´t have a setup where I could check how everything looked before I took the picture.

I had to approach it with the trial and error method. Take a picture and look at the result in the camera. Make some adjustments and start over again. I think you grasp how I had to work to get this picture.

It was hard work to get this picture and that makes it a little more special to get it chosen by Wild Bird Trust.

The angle of the picture is what makes it special to me. I like the composition with the foreground, how the clouds almost are like a wall of cotton and that the Pelican both are looking straight at the lens. It is also really nice that the Pelicans add to the depth in the picture by not being parallel to each other.

I have included the picture, together with eight more, in a small Photo Album from Lake Kerkini 2014. Don´t forget to check out that Photo Album as you hopefully will find more good Dalmatian Pelican photos there.