Orchestra Conductor

[Melissa Groo]

Canon 5d Mark II
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6
ISO 400
1/1000 sec
f/5.6
Handheld from a boat

Taken last month at Gull Island, Witless Bay, Newfoundland. Some kind of juvenile gull (maybe black-backed?), maybe someone else can identify what kind. I did do single image tone mapping in Photomatix and did some sharpening, levels and curves in CS3. No cropping.
Any comments and critiques greatly welcomed.

[Julie Kenward]

Boy, Melissa, there are some really good points to this image and some not-so-good points.

What I like: The bird, overall. Neat wing spread, cool position overall...love that you can see so much of him and that he is well lit.

What I'm struggling with: The bird's HA is nowhere near ideal - there's not a spec of eye contact here and it makes it hard for me to engage with him. Also, he's totally lost to me with the BG of his surroundings. If you had caught him higher in the air then he wouldn't be surrounded by rocks so close to his feather color but then you also wouldn't have that totally cool wing spread.

If this is a full frame image I'd consider cropping quite a bit chunk of the BG out and see if you can't get him to stand out more against those rocks...maybe darken them so he looks lighter, thus pulling the viewer's eye towards him. Just a thought...

[Melissa Groo]

Thanks Julie. I knew I'd be lost on the HA and eye contact, but I was going for something else here. More of a feeling than a direct representation.
Do you like this one better? I did a little cloning over the back, darkened rocks, and cropped to a vertical.

[Julie Kenward]

I do like that better because there are far less distractions. Nice repost, Melissa!

[Lance Peters]

Hi Melissa - great timing - Like the wing position. Know you were trying to create something a little different - so can live without the HA, But IMHO that BG is the problem - even with the repost, there is a strong diagonal line in the BG that cuts through the birds back - it is a contrast line that draws the eye.

Think you did the best you could here - no amount of moving around was going to improve what was in the BG.
Looking forward to seeing more.
:)

[Hazel Grant]

Yes, the repost does much. When I first opened the photo, I was taken by the clarity of the bird itself and the catching him in that pose, but the BK muddled everything. He seemed lost in a crowd. The repost does much to change that. Good correction.

[Melissa Groo]

Thanks so much for all the feedback.

[John Chardine]

Agree that some BG work could improve the image. With a faster lens wide open, and a closer distance to the subject, your DoF would have been narrower and the BG more OOF. You can experiment with masking off the subject and blurring the BG in post processing. Also if you tone down the diagonal line, that will diminish the effect.

Overall I like the repost with the light coming through the tail. Regarding the HA, birds usually focus intently on the landing place for good reason- a pilot is not likely to take her/his eyes off the dials or the runway on landing. In these situations then, an ideal head angle also becomes a biologically unrealistic head angle. I personally don't mind the HA because it says something about the biology of the bird. (Now Melissa you're going to tell me the bird was taking off!- if it were taking off, a heads-up, better head angle would also be biologically reasonable).

The species is a Herring Gull- juvenile.

[Melissa Groo]

Thank you John for your excellent points, and your identification!
I will give that blurring BG a try, had only darkened so far.
And yes, the bird was landing (phew!:)).