Photographing Pelicans on a CRAPPY WEATHER DAY! (Lockport, Manitoba).mp4

Hello and welcome to On Location with Scott. Today I am out with my camera and we're going to go shoot some pelicans. We're here at the locks and I see all kinds of pelicans and right now they're huddled and staying warm. So hopefully the wind isn't too bad and we'll see what we can do with with my fz 300. It's got a pretty good zoom on it and hopefully we can capture some some good shots of the pelicans. Oh there's a comorant there too. So let's see what it's like. We'll go down to the locks and figure out what we can shoot. I'm going to put my knapsack on properly so that I can have two hands because I'm recording this and I've got my camera and my camera is right here. It's the fz 300. 24 to 600 zoom. Not the highest megapixels but it'll do for a video. That's why I bought this camera. Let's go down by the water and see if we can lock in some pictures of the pelicans. The pelican hunt if you will. Okay over there is the locks. You can see the flowing and the pelicans and we're going to go down. It's quite steep so hopefully I can balance myself down here. It's a little muddy. It might be a different way down. I don't know. Let's go over here. I don't want to slip in the mud and fall and it's really windy. Well let's give it a shot shall we. It's always going down that's the hard part. If you walk like a duck though you can get down. Okay we're down. Going up will be easy. So go down by the river here and there's a cement barrier over there we can stand this on and there you can see the pelicans. It's not very deep. They're standing on rocks and there's a good picture of the locks. It's cold and windy probably about seven or eight degrees celsius. Sun is popping in and out of clouds but mostly cloudy which is good so there won't be a lot of shadows when I shoot the pictures and we'll see what we can come up with. Okay let's uh let's go see if we can take some pictures. They're trying to stay warm amongst each other. Okay I'm down by the water now and there's the pelicans and we'll take a couple snapshots and we'll show it to you. First I have to turn the camera on. Turn my hat backwards and take my glasses down so I can use the viewfinder. Try and get a few in flight. It's a patience game thing. There's one out there. I like this one sitting on a rock and you just got to move a little bit. Sometimes you have to move to get the background that you want right and I want the locks in the background. There we go. So you have to move around a little bit. There's a couple in flight. Just getting the right the right shot for the right time and I'll take a picture of my little setup here so you can see this is all I film with. A wireless mic and uh let's take this out a little bit more. A wireless mic and a little tripod that uh that I use as a selfie stick. Okay I'm going to turn you around a little bit. When you're shooting at wildlife you have to be quick and sometimes you have to hold that shutter down and it'll take some rapid shots so you get the actual movement of the birds. A lot of them will not be in focus depending on how quick your camera is. This is an older camera. It's not as quick as some of the newer ones but it will capture in flight and motion. So let's let's go over here a little bit. I don't know if you can hear that but those locks are really quite amazing. A lot of things are basically are on angles too right. You get low to the water and you take a shot and I gotta get because you want a background you don't want to shoot across you want to shoot towards the background and yes this rock is hard on the knees and you want the background of the locks. So you have to get at an angle sometimes sometimes you have to get down sometimes you have to get up. Ansel Adams once said if you don't like the the shot you're taking move. So sometimes you have to move a little bit to get what you want to shoot and this one here is a little bit better. There's one going and we'll take a picture of the whole blocks where I'm standing here. You can see the sky is cloudy. There's not much really to happen here and I can't wait to get back in the car and there it's warm. There's a camera in the back there. He just landed. I'm just going to move way over by the locks. I think the birds over here behind me over here are eating and hopefully we can get them with some fish in their mouths. Okay I'll take you over here and take a look. There's the locks there's the birds and I'm going to try and make this happen. Now every once in a while when you're shooting something there's like this dead tree here. It is very good for support to shoot the shot. It gives you support especially at a slower shutter speed. Although I'm shooting probably at 1 800th of a second I'll put this the f-stops and what I'm using for the pictures. There's a good one right there he's got his wings kind of balancing himself there. Sometimes you just gotta wait. I'll get one of the locks a little up close here. They decided to leave which is too bad but there's a no fishing sign there. That doesn't apply to pelicans, seagulls or any other bird that's doing it. There's a cameron. Okay no fishing. You have to get past this point to fish I guess but we're gonna go out and go for a walk down the shore here and see if we can get some pelicans. There's some flying right there right. The nice thing about this camera when it's doing 4k once it's focused I've got a good zoom on it. There you can see a couple pelicans just meandering over to the other pack. Okay let's start here. Start here and you can see how many pelicans there are and they're all floating back to where I came from. Go figure. And there's the other pack way over there and we can zoom in with this one. One thing about the Lumix cameras for video they're pretty darn good. Instead of flying they're swimming. Go figure right. One thing about animal photography they don't stop and pose for you. You got to do the work. And there on top of the bridge it goes by a semi. Just a quick snapshot of that. I take pictures of everything and anything. Rocks, trees because you never know which one's going to come out looking really good and every once in a while you just got to stop and wait for it to come to you. And that's where the patience game comes in. Let's move this this way. We'll shoot a 2.8 and hopefully you get the one bird out of focus here at the front. Okay I'm not sure how that's going to turn out. It just figures you know you move somewhere and they move the other way. So sometimes you put your chair down and you just wait and you see them and you observe them and you figure out the patterns of the birds. You could tell when they start moving their wings out of the pack they're going to go for a little flight. Generally they warm up just like I did in the mornings. There goes one there just above the water. Don't know how good it's going to turn out but it uh it'll turn out. I just wish they would be eating or something. Like I said it's a crappy day today. Ideally if you can isolate a bird and have the background blurred awesome. Hard to do. Very hard to do. I've been here like half an hour and I don't think I've got one good shot that I like. So gives you an idea what it's like to shoot animals or wildlife. You have to be patient and you have to wait for something to happen and nothing's happening. There's one on a rock. Gotta turn my hat around. See how that turns out. There he is. But his bill is kind of that way. You want it sideways so you can see where the fish go and stuff. I guess they're doing some maintenance. Personal maintenance. There's one. He's just floating with the current and there we go. He's just floating by himself towards the thing. There's one flying. There we go. Might have got that one. Now really this one here. This little video is pretty cool because they're sitting there. You can see the wind blowing but you can also see the locks with the waterfalls. Well I'm freezing so I'm going to turn around head home. Warm up the hands a little bit and keep snapping. Keep taking pictures. Throw out the bad ones. Keep the good ones. I don't think I've got a good one here yet today. I won't throw them all out but I'll throw a lot of them out. Keep the ones that are worth keeping. You got to focus the poorly composed, underexposed, overexposed. Get rid of those. You don't have to be handling those. Get a fairly good shot. Play in your editor. For me it's Luminar Neo and try and make a shot good. Until I see you again, cheers!