Four Gulls Taking Off

[Carl Albro]

Taken from Kayak this morning at 9 am next to Bassett Island Cape Cod
Canon 5D Mark III with 70-200mm F2.8 II with 2x entendor III
155mm, 1/2000 sec at f/5.6 1EV Shutter Priority, ISO 640
Processed in LR 4.1, Minor Cropping, Exposure -0.48, Highlights -69, Shadows +40, Clarity +30, Vibrance +25
Medium Contrast Tone Curve, Sharpening Amount 40, Radius 0.8, Detail 35, Masking 13, Luminance Noise Reduction 18


Carl Albro

[Don Nelson]

Interesting takeoff. If it were mine, I'd clone out the point of land behing the left bird, and it is soft -- could use some sharpening.

[Randy Stout]

Carl"

I like the varied poses shown, clean without merges, the foreground rock, exposure.

The birds are a little soft as Don mentioned. A bit more sharpening might help. DOF is always a challenge with groups.

I certainly get Don's point about the spit of land. From a composition standpoint, it would be perfect if it was on the other side to help balance out the mass of the rock. However, barring major seismic activity, that seems unlikely to happen at this spot.

Look forward to more images.

Cheers

Randy

[Shawn Zierman]

The landmass in the bg does seem to disrupt the visual "flow" of the image.
Without knowing anything of the location, I wonder if you could have approached
the birds in your kayak more from your left, thereby possibly eliminating the
land mass, and maybe even getting more or all of the rock perch in the image....
The positioning of the four birds is fantastic.
A subtle tweak to consider would be to remove the (feather?) or whatever the
bright spot is right at the bottom of the frame under the rock perch.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like this image alot more than I thought I would from the thumbnail. Four very different poses, but all with nice HA's! The rock looks great but cropping off about 30-40% of it from the bottom, even though eliminating the water at bottom, creates a very good anchoring effect and strenghtens the comp IMO (very subjective, just something to try). I rather like the land inthe BG, creates a visual reference point of distance.

[Bill Dix]

A very pleasing coastal scene, with good angles on all four birds. Could do without the spit of land, and a little more sharpening of the birds as noted above.

[Arthur Morris]

For me the point of land is only a very minor distraction. The arrangement of the four gull each with a great pose is remarkable. They almost look as if they were placed in the image.