Bonaparte's gull

[Richard Stern]

I managed to obtain couple of images of this while visiting Niagara-on-the-Lake recently. I know the bird is flying away, but I think the head angle is still OK, and I hope the wing angle is acceptable. The original bg was a bit overwhelming, so I applied some Gaussian blur and desaturated it.

D300, 300 f/4 AF-S + 1.4TC. Hand-held. 1/2500, f6.3, ISO800.

Thanks for looking and comments.

Richard

[Jim Fenton]

I think the wing position is OK but to my eyes, the birds body turning away along with the HA is a bit distracting.

Excellent exposure on the whites and sharpness looks excellent.

BF looks a bit noisy on my monitor? (could be my eyes after being out in the wind a lot today).

[Daniel Cadieux]

The image does have a certain appeal, but my personal preference is for not having the gull flying past you. Good job on the techs, and the BG blur looks natural (something that is easy to over do). I found the WB a little bit "dirty yellow/green", so I applied a cooling filter (8% density) to see if it improved that...hope you like:)

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Like it despite flying away. The HA makes the difference. Well done.