The Story of "Abbey Road"
Posted 12/11/2012

When I head down to Big Sur, I'm typically hoping to find some condors to
photograph, but as there aren't that many of them left in the world, finding
them often proves to be elusive.
It was an overcast day and after hanging out at a typically decent condor
location for a while with no condors to be seen, attention turns to what else
is in the area.
You'll frequently see marine life in the ocean below this pullout, usually
sea lions and sometimes dolphins and whales depending on the
time of year.
On this occasion, four pelicans flew by low over the water. The water
looked particularly glassy on this day, so I shot some images as they went
by thinking that the water looked cool.
Later, a humming bird started feeding in the flowers at the edge of the highway
pullout and I managed to get some frames of it as it moved
from flower to flower.
When I got home my first thoughts were to check to see how the humming bird
photos came out and I got some good ones. Only later did I check the
pelican shots, and as I was going through them I noticed I had a couple
where all the birds were gliding (most of the shots, at least one bird
was mid flap) and their shadows were very obvious on the glassy water. Only
at this time did I realize I had a good image.
I grew up with parents who were big Beatles fans, so I'd seen the Abbey
Road album cover since I was a young lad. As soon as I saw these four
pelicans floating over the ocean on the screen, it reminded me of that album
cover and the name for the image was self evident.
For the technically inclined:
ISO 100
1/160 sec
f7.1
400mm