Pelican Portraiture in Overcast Light, Winter 2022-2023, Part VI

In overcast light there is really only one type of photograph I am looking to make: a portrait.  Overcast skies can be thought of an enormous soft box, diffusing the light so it has little or no directionality. That means no shadows, which can be a good look for portraits! This is an appealing alternative to the my usual “flat light” approach to portraits on wildlife.  This morning the sky was overcast, dark and heavy, and would soon bring rain. I had a new 128GB card I wanted to test out so I went out to shoot portraits. I was alone on Goldfish Point for a long time and there were hundreds of pelicans so finding a few good ones was no problem.  There were a ton of birds flying around but I resisted any flight photography as I knew from experience the images  made in such light would be uninteresting unless I tried for deliberate blurs and I was not going for that today.  I photographed for about 30 minutes and then headed home to walk the dogs.  These are the four images I kept. I thought the enormous softbox worked well and I am pretty happy with these, especially the three images showing two eyes.  Cheers, and thanks for looking!