American White Pelican, Sageville Marsh, Iowa
It was about time to get out again and hold a camera in my hand after a busy week. The goal was to look after a mostly night active critter this evening at Sageville Marsh, a small wetland area not far from home. I will not reveal yet what it was, but a photo and blog post will be postponed until probably tomorrow. The reason is the great display of an American White Pelican on my arrival at the marsh around 7PM. The gesture and long reflection of the bird on the water triggered my desire to make this click across the pond. By the way, it was the first time ever that I saw a pelican at Sageville Marsh. With an overcast during that late time of the day it is probably not an exaggeration to call it low light. I shot this in full frame mode FX with the bird in the center. In post process I finally cropped the image to about DX dimensions and took the bird out of center. I do that to get the brightest part of the lens on the subject and have still a decent arrangement in the frame. This little trick has helped me before to handhold and maintain autofocus at shutter speeds of 1/60s or even slower with the long lens.