Gull

[William Malacarne]

Was a misty, overcast day and not much going on.
Bolsa Chica Wetlands(Huntington Beach), Calif.

Canon 7D_300 f/2.8
ISO 640
aperture f/3.5
Shutter 1/2000
EV +0.5
Metering Partial
3OCT2010 @ 8:53 AM

Bill

[Ray Rozema]

Nice eye contact and angle. Exposure looks good. Birds looks liitle soft in areas, might have been better w higher F stop

TFS

[pat lillich]

what beautiful markings on the head, gorgeous eye, and a really nice background. really nice detail in the whites too. Wonder if you can sharpen the legs and feet a bit more so those great black toenails standout more?

[Lance Peters]

Hi Wiliam - Lots to like here - Exposure looks good, Good HA, Sharp --- Plenty of SS so might have stopped down a little more to add some DOF especially in the feet - that said though, plenty of DOF were it matters.
BG is quite nice - might have tried moving up/down a little to move the strip from behind the head.
Good show :)

[Julie Kenward]

I agree with the others - it does look soft - I'm wondering if you did any noise reduction that would have caused this or...are the gull's feathers wet? That might account for part of the soft look here. (It would be helpful if everyone remembered to include basic info of how they post-processed their images - sometimes it does make a difference!)

I do agree that it's sharp where it needs to be but the beak seems to have the most sharpness and everything else kind of falls off from there. You've got a ss of 1/2000th and the bird is standing still - a quick adjustment of less ss and more aperture probably would have yielded a stronger final image.

[Ulli Hoeger]

Like your gull portrait.

DOF is where I look for it, on head and eye. For me that's the critical part of this image. BG, and rest of the bird work for this kind of impact.

Ulli