Pelicans on Lake LaShane this morning. April 9, 2026.

Last night I was photographing these pelicans under cloudy skies. The images just didn’t “pop”. This morning I had a 30 minute window with sunlight on the pelicans before the clouds again moved in.  This is the full uncropped image, resized for the web.

Car location.

My car was parked on the road that bisects the northern end of the lake. The car was just east of the bridge, facing east. I was resting my lens on the window ledge for stability. The pelicans were to the north on the far north shore of the lake with a few of them in the water. After the clouds moved in again, and before I left, I took a picture of the car’s location with my iPhone. If you look closely you can see the face of our dog who is sitting in the driver’s seat.

Cropped from the image at the top of this article.

This is my preferred version of the image. It is cropped to emphasize the pelicans in the central third of the image.

Cropped from the image at the top of this post. Click to see a somewhat larger image.

This crop is from the area of the image just to the right of center.

Google Earth Pro, car to pelicans distance.  Click to see a much larger image.

I wanted to see how far away the pelicans were from my location. I opened Google Earth Pro (which is a free download) and went to the north end of Lake LaShane. I clicked the measuring tool (the ruler icon at the top)  and drew a line from the north shore of the lake where the pelicans were gathered to my car’s location just east of the bridge. The pelicans were 368 yards away, give or take a bit. The image is not razor sharp at this distance, but surprisingly good.

Image Data: Canon 7D Mark II camera. Canon EF 100-400mm lens at 400mm. f/11, 1/640 second, ISO 200.