Capturing the Action

A pelican dives for a fish.

I just returned from a week’s vacation in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  It was literally another world of extreme poverty living side by side with extreme wealth!  A beautiful place that many of the people I met, visited and never returned home from, but decided to stay.

On vacations I find myself shooting wearing two hats, or in two different frames of mind.  I’m always looking for the artistic, action or people shots that I generally prefer to take, but I also find myself also wanting to capture the typical vacation snapshots that record the time and place as a record of my vacation.  On this vacation I took 1253 photos, using 3 different camera, my Nikon D700, my Canon G12, and my new Nikon AW100 underwater camera.  All 3 cameras performed admirably and for different purposes.  I would estimate that about 1000 of my photos are of the record snapshot variety and about 250 of the more serious nature.

This photo kind of bridges the gap.  I was shooting a beautiful bay, with azure colored water and noticed this pelican continuously diving for his dinner.  Shooting in continuous burst mode, I was able to capture this shot just a fraction of a second before he hit the water and gobbled a tasty fish he had been eying from above.  Not a shot you see everyday!