Whenever I go out to take pictures of wildlife, first I am fascinated by the colors of their feathers, fur, or whatever their appearance might be. I love colors in nature. I truly enjoy them. However, occasionally, there is a moment when I want to mute the colors.
One of my favorite things about wildlife photography is witnessing and capturing the moments when they seem to reveal their emotions – happiness, excitement, frustration, annoyance, sadness, etc. Sometimes their face and body expressions are quite obvious — opening their mouth to yawn, using their talons to attack the other, etc., — and depict their inner state very well. But for many times, their expressions are very subtle. Those are the moments when I often prefer to process the image in black and white.
The picture of a brown pelican above is a good example. Looking far off into the distance, he was enjoying the quiet ocean on a dock post at first. He looked almost sleepy, and his face expression made me sleepy too. And all of a sudden the mellow quiet late morning atmosphere was disturbed by a loud noise when one of the fishermen started the engine of his boat. The pelican turned around and looked at the source of the loud noise. His sleepy calm face was totally gone, his eyes were almost annoyed. The picture above is the moment when he turned around toward the boat. After a while later, as the boat sailed into the ocean, the noise gradually disappeared. The dock returned to a quiet state, so did the pelican’s facial expression.
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© Ellie Teramoto Photography
www.ellieteramoto.com