When I tell the Skimm story I usually stop at the photograph that sold. The bird launches, I get two frames, the second one is the print everyone knows. What the story leaves out is that I kept shooting.
Pelicans don't reach full altitude in one wingbeat. They climb in slow steps — wings down for thrust, wings up to reset, body parallel to the water — and the morning I made Skimm I had the camera on a fast continuous setting and kept the trigger held until the bird cleared my frame.
This is what came next. Wings up at the top of the stroke, feet still trailing, body lifted off the surface, the warm light from the rising sun catching the underside of the wing in a way it didn't catch in the takeoff frame.
Skimm is the moment of launch. Flight is the moment after. Same bird. Fully committed to the sky.
If you own Skimm, this is the next breath in the sequence. They were made to live together.
