Ring-billed Gull

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11-13-2023, 07:20 PM
Dave Goldberg

1 Attachment(s)

Ring-billed Gull

Attachment 195981

When a day long storm began clearing, I headed down to a local pond where I knew the gulls like to hang out so I could get some practice shots. Being very tolerant of people, and of course always hoping for a hand out, they let me get fairly close. I would have liked him to have been positioned a little differently on the post, but he wouldn't have it.

Shot with a Canon R7 with Sigma 150-600C, and exposed to the right at 1/400", f/6.3, ISO 2000, FL 403mm. Raw Digger showed no blown pixels. Denoised using ON1 and edited on Darktable, applying basic tone and color enhancements and removal of distraction on the post.
11-14-2023, 12:34 PM
Gerald Kelberg

Hi Dave,

From the pose, it looks like he is auditioning for a "Grumpy Bird" role! Possibly not as tolerant as you think!

Nice clean detail, very sharp - almost to the point where the belly is looking a little crunchy.

I like the contrast between the bird and the background especially the rich colours in the upper portion. And the post has lots of character.

I think I would like to have more space in front of the bird - room to take off into!

Thanks for sharing, Gerald
11-14-2023, 03:54 PM
William Dickson

I would go for a more landscape crop here. Showing less perch and more on the LHS. The BG colours look good and would add to a looser crop. I like the colours throughout and you got some great feather detail. The belly does look over sharpened, maybe wet feathers..But does look a bit crunchy as Gerald said.

Will
11-15-2023, 09:14 AM
Jonathan Ashton

Well process from my POV, I l like the image size/orientation but would also go along with a little more space on the left.
11-15-2023, 06:35 PM
Dave Goldberg

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gerald Kelberg

Hi Dave,

From the pose, it looks like he is auditioning for a "Grumpy Bird" role! Possibly not as tolerant as you think!

Well, he is a gull... But they do get pretty tolerant if they think there's a hand out for them (no luck this time)

All - thanks for your comments. I agree with the suggestions. I was really just playing around to see how much detail I could get at close focus and then the light turned very favorably. Over-sharpening is something I really try to avoid, but I've had to adjust a bit now that I'm applying output sharpening on a re-sized TIFF, as suggested here in the forum.

I have different shot that I'll share as well.

Thanks again for everyone's comments!

Dave G.