1st winter Iceland Gull

[John Chardine]

Today I decided to take a trip to a pond in Truro, Nova Scotia, that still had some open water- a rare commodity considering temperatures were -30°C this AM and reached a high of -19°C! There were many very cold looking Mallards in the pond and a few gulls including this 1st winter Iceland Gull. Iceland Gulls are pretty common here right now. I froze up over the afternoon but the 50D just kept on going!

The bird was landing on the water so cropped to give some room below. Cloned out a green pipe in the cattails top left and did some NR. What looks like noise in the water to the left, isn't.

Canon EOS 50D, 70-200 f4 IS, 1.4 tcII @ 280mm
capture date: Friday, 16 January, 2009 3:05 PM
exposure program: Manual
ISO speed: 640
shutter speed: 1/800
aperture: f5.6
exposure bias: +0.0
metering: Pattern
flash: OFF

[Daniel Cadieux]

John, I really like the POV here (point-of-view). I like the BG going from water, to ice, to habitat. I can't tell where that green pipe was...good job! I know snow can look bluish in some conditions and you may have left it so willingly, but I would raise the colour temp a bit...I'm thinking it would give a nice result :-)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great find, angle. dangling foot and eye contact. I might blur the BG a bit more.

[Tony Whitehead]

Superb landing pose, John. I like the way the legs are just starting to extend bu especially the position of the wings and light on the head. Well worth braving the freezing conditions. I can't imagine those temperatures. Anything approaching 0 Celsius is freezing to us!

[Juan Aragonés]

The landing pose is really good John and you did a good job cloning out the pipeline but you did a better job getting this bird in focus at -19ºC, ooops, I can not image to myself shooting in those freezing conditions!

I agree about the warming up of the colour and adding some blurring to the BG. Well done