A swiming juvy gull

[Desmond Chan]

70-300f4.5-5.6 VR on D700 hand-held. ISO 800 f8 1/1600s.

Slightly cropped. Most of the background was actually in the shadow. The bird itself is exposed to a certain degree. Corrected the exposure on post and decided that the color is not necessary for this image.


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Comment welcome and thank you for looking !!

[pat lillich]

Hey Desmond, I really like the reflection and ripples in the water surrounding him - they add motion to the photo and soften the extreme contrast of the dark water with the light bird. they also add neat diagonals to the perfect horizontal that he makes - very cool.....

[Julie Kenward]

Desmond, I love that this is in b&w. That said, it appears dark on my monitor at work so I'll check it again when I get home if I have time. I'm not real fond of the angle of the bird in the image because I feel like you're up too high to really get me to engage with his eye. I also think a bit of CCW rotation would help and maybe some distortion correction to get him to be more level within the frame.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Desmond - a different view and composition for sure. Obviously trying to create something a little different - no harm in that.
The composition doesn't quite work for my personal tastes - eye is too centered??
Like the Black and White!!

[John Chardine]

Desmond- I am very enthusiastic about new ideas in bird photography and I like what is presented here- the B/W look and the subtle tones of ripples in the water. Nice exposure in a difficult situation. What doesn't work for me here is the camera angle plain and simple. I am not sure if high camera angles ever work (maybe this is a future project for us to research at ETL?!) except maybe for an image directly overhead, which would really make a statement (I've done a few of these at bird colonies). Anyway I still think the exploration of new ideas like this is a very fruitful approach to wildlife photography.

[Desmond Chan]

...Anyway I still think the exploration of new ideas like this is a very fruitful approach to wildlife photography.

Thank you for the encouragement, John.

Confession: this is a snap shot, i.e., saw it, took it. In manual exposure mode. The gull is actually over-exposed but the water looked ok. As Artie has pointed out somewhere and I'm paraphrasing here that precise exposure is not really necessary in digital photography. Anyway, so I made the adjustment in post to get the gull correctly "exposed". And, no surprise, the water then became darker. The gull was the only element in the photo not in the shadow. Since I liked the light and the shadow and so decided to get rid of the color. I will agree the perspective is a bit steep :D I'm not sure any shot has to be straight from the top or the side either.


Thank you for the comments everyone !!

This has been posted by somebody here on BPN before but take a look at here:

http://www.bozaivanovic.com/v3/stories.asp?st_id=19&stp_id=293

http://www.bozaivanovic.com/v3/stories.asp?st_id=21

One of the photos won the 2009 Canon editor's choice in Amsterdam.