A fish's worst nightmare

Here's a group of American White Pelicans that I photographed this past November in the river channel below the Millwood Lake spillway, Little River County, AR. Unlike their relative, the almost exclusively coastal Brown Pelican which dives into the water for food, these birds get in a formation and, more or less, herd schools of fish and then scoop them up.

Nikon DSLR
600mm f4 VR
f5.6 @ 1/1250
ISO 200
Near UniWB preset
Beanbag on vehicle window

Good light and detail and good exposure of a difficult and easy to blow out subject. I'm finding the foreground water more interesting than the background and wonder whether the shot could have been composed to include more of the former. Or whether the image might be more effective with some cropped off the top. Still, very well done as is.

Very nice capture Charles. I like how the birds are lit, and how they stand out against the background. They sure are comical!

i like the way they seem to have arranged themselves for you.

Randy-I took this photo while sitting in the parking lot above the river channel. It was one of those danged if you do danged if you don't sort of things. I couldn't move lower without spooking the pelicans or, with the compression of the 600, having them packed in tighter. So, I went with this composition. That being said, it might be possible to recrop the image as a 4X7 (as opposed to the current 5X7) and reduce the amount of differently textured water.

Thanks for the response, Charles. What I meant to say is would it have been possible to re-compose by tilting your lens downward to capture more of the reflections of the pelicans? Of course, there might have been something in the way to prevent this, or the image as is contains all of the pelican reflections that were there, unless as you say you had moved lower to lengthen them, which under the circumstances would have been out of the question. I know that critiquing the image that you didn't take rather than the image you did take can get pretty dicey precisely because I wasn't there, and I probably ought to begin that kind of critique with an apology to the photographer for doing it, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

Anyhow, getting back to the image you took, it's a well done shot of an interesting subject. You might take a look at whether it seems to be a stronger image if you crop a little off the top and see what you think. It may not be stronger cropped, and you could argue that the negative space on top plays off against the lighter areas and gives the image a more expansive feel, but to me the slightly out-of-focus texture of the water across the top is more of a distraction than a help.

Randy, I took no offense with your original response. It persuaded me to go back and view the image from another's perspective. Also, you are absolutely correct in guessing that something was in the way that prevented me pointing my lens lower. In this case, it was the top edge of the rip rock which lined the river channel.

Great shot, Charles. The lighting is nice, and I really like the reflections. I agree with Randy that cropping a little off the top might strengthen the image.

I think a 4:2 ratio pano style crop would work very well.

As suggested by Mathew, here's a 4X2 ratio pano style crop.

I like it a lot more with the crop. I was reading about composition a while back and saw it compared to the phrase "If you aren't with us you are against us". Which basically means anything that doesn't add to the photo only takes away from it.

I have really enjoyed watching the pelicans on Lake Conway this winter. I have been fortunate enough to watch them feed in groups just like this a few times.

I like the cropp.
Great photo.
the fisch

Both crops work for me. A good solid shot of Pelicans.