{"id":7405,"date":"2012-09-27T11:06:46","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T19:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2012-10-01T18:05:58","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T02:05:58","slug":"september-26-2012-malibu-tweets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2012\/09\/27\/september-26-2012-malibu-tweets\/","title":{"rendered":"September 26, 2012 Malibu Tweets"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I had a rare midday work shift on Wednesday, and several hours of daylight remained.\u00a0 What to do?!\u00a0 I had made precious few photo shoots (and postings) of any sort of late for you devoted SB fanatics, so I went to the beach!<\/p>\n

This trip would not be the normal do-nothing day at the beach, though.\u00a0 In a couple of recent do-nothing days at the beach, I was wishing that I had my extremely high-end camera and lens with me, as there is a gaggle of pelicans doing what pelicans do nearby.\u00a0 (I know that’s what you were thinking.)\u00a0 These pelicans would present an interesting and photographic challenge, so off I went on Pelican Chase 2012 I.<\/p>\n

I took Decker and Encinal Canyon roads to La Piedra Beach, which is a couple of miles west of Zuma.\u00a0 The hike to Pelican Headquarters took about 15 minutes, and, lo and behold, the big birds were out of the office!\u00a0 There is a large rock where they like to roost, but not now.\u00a0 Oh well, I had my camera and long lens, and would shoot other stuff instead.\u00a0 Lucky for me there was quite a bit going on:\u00a0 a number of other ocean birds, occasional human forms, three dolphins all named “Flipper”, and three white birds which flew back and forth in front of me at sunset.\u00a0 Upon exhaustive review and investigation, these birds appear amazingly similar to the snowy egret (a small white heron)…so I would bet my bottom dollar that they are indeed snowy egrets!\u00a0 These particular samples must have taken a wrong turn at the Arctic Circle.<\/p>\n

I do not regret the egrets’ digression, but I digress.<\/p>\n

On this shoot I learned that my long lens, at 200mm, in autofocus mode (AF), is better at focusing on “stuff” behind birds than on the birds.\u00a0 (Maybe I should read the Canon manuals.)\u00a0 By late in the day I was relying more on manual focus, especially when the birds were in flight.\u00a0 I had to compose and focus simultaneously, and\u00a0 fortunately a few came out sharp enough to share.<\/p>\n

The pelicans finally appeared right around sunset!\u00a0 About ten of them did a fly-by some 100 yards offshore.<\/p>\n

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  I had a rare midday work shift on Wednesday, and several hours of daylight remained.\u00a0 What to do?!\u00a0 I had made precious few photo… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,26,28,17,49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-48","7":"category-animal-day","8":"category-artsy","9":"category-landscapes","10":"category-local-conejo-valley-and-san-fernando-valley-area","11":"entry","12":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7405"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7437,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions\/7437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}