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"Pelican Connection (2)" is part of a project with the theme, "Pelican "Connection". I practice mindful photography. One day, this pelican was settling in to roost and to sleep for the night, right around sunset. He heard me, opened his eyes, and looked right at me. Pelicans are notorious for looking right into your soul with their almost human-like eyes. We spent a bit of time together. I loved the curves and lines of his feathers, and the lines of his bill and head folded into his body. The background was rather dark and busy. I couldn't ask him to move in front of a better backdrop, and a shallow depth of field still could not create a pleasing non-distracting background. I waited until the light was just right on the pelican and created his portrait, using a long telephoto lens, as he looked right at me. Then in the digital darkroom, I played around with creating and adding different backgrounds until I created this golden one. Our eyes ignore distracting backgrounds and...

Louise Lindsay is a photographer, living in the Florida Keys, and spending some time in the mountains of North Carolina. She practices mindful photography, sometimes known as contemplative photography. Mindful photography involves the practice of being as fully present as possible in the moment of creating an image. The subjects range from landscapes, seascapes, street photography, macro and flower photography, to nature photography, to almost anything. Louise focuses on the encounter within the moment of creating the image, both her encounter with the "subject" of the image, and the eventual encounter a viewer has with the image. Such encounters include the varieties of emotions evoked, often different for each person. She is...