Pelicans

An oft repeated subject – I think there may be four or five shots of flying pelicans in past journal entries. Here is why.

Last fall, 2010, a client insisted that she wanted a 32 x 40 inch pastel of a south Florida beach sunrise because she loves to take meditative morning walks on the beach. Well, I’m not a morning person, and I am generally sluggish and nasty until I’ve had two cups of morning coffee. Thus, I had never gotten up before 6:00 AM in order to shoot a sunrise. However, she insisted that the pastel had to be a beach sunrise, and that I should shoot multiple sunrises in order to get the right sky, the perfect clouds, water, birds in flight, and a full moon. Of course the client is always right, and was she ever. I enjoyed those mornings so much that I went back to the beach over and over again., and the client was so pleased with the result that she named the pastel painting “The Living Prayer.” I plan on returning as often as possible for more photographs this winter.

During those photo shoots I took many frames of pelicans in flight, and I’ve posted two or three of those photos in the past, because the birds are so graceful , and they always lift my spirits. The sun wasn’t above the horizon in this shot, so the shutter speed is too slow to stop the pelicans completely and they are a bit fuzzy. However, the slight blur gives a sense of their motion, and I like the rising line they make as they move through the picture frame from right to left.