Bonaparte's Gull headed North.

[Shawn Zierman]

Every spring, there will be a few days to find this species on a nice mud flat near my house.
The challenging part is crawling around in the recently thawed out water....very cold!
SonyA300, Sigma50/500, iso400, f9, 1/1000, cropped, removed a few specular highlights,
selectively toned down the brightest whites on the gull (not blown in ACR), selective NR to
the bg, USM. Comments and critiques welcome.
Regards,
Shawn Zierman.

[Jack Breakfast]

Shawn, that is a lovely portrait of my favorite gull! I like the details in the gull and also that background. Well done. At what focal length did you take this?

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Exquisite light, perfect exposure, low angle and colors. Excellent comp and IQ as well. Beautiful image.

[Tim King]

I really like this photo. The colors, BG, pose, plumage and those poking rocks are all nice. Fine job.

[Marina Scarr]

Nice capture with good exposure and interesting environment. If it were mine, I think I would take a little off of the bottom and left. While I really love that blue water and your low angle, I feel it is overpowering your bird a bit.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Beautiful. I love it as is. The raised foot is a bonus. After looking again I can also see how a small amount off the bottom might just improve it as well.

[dankearl]

The BG and FG are so good, it does sort of overpower the bird, but a lovely photo overall.Nice angle and IQ.

[Raymond Lee]

Great shot! Nice effort on such low POV. The crop looks fine to me. The exposure on the blacks look very good, but I find small areas of the whites look a bit bright on my monitor (calibrated).

[John Cooper]

A nice composition Shawn of this attractive Gull. Background and foreground very complimentry to the subjct, but if possible I think toning down the brightest whites would be beneficial.

[arash_hazeghi]

sweet pose and details, nice exposure too!

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Shawn, looks like a difficult gull to expose, but you seemed to have mastered that aspect in this nicely. Love the low perspective, detail, and the colour of the water is amazing.

Its always nice to have a photographic location close to one's house.

[David Salem]

Great shot of this very handsome little gull. Hope to see an adult like this sometime. Been chasing a bunch of juvies around for a few weeks here in California. Everything looks great and the whole scene is beautiful. Well done.

[Shawn Zierman]

Thanks for the excellent feedback and crop suggestion.
Here is a version with the crop suggestion applied.

[Karl Egressy]

Great low angle shot, Shawn. The repost is much more pleasing. Exposure is perfect and nice stepping pose captured,

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, the repost is spot on as far the comp goes!! Great exposure, details, low angle. The raised foot is an important element in the image and I am sure that was one the things that made you choose this particular image to process and share. I would only enhance the red eyering for web presentation.

[Shawn Zierman]

Breakfast, sorry I forgot to answer your question. I'm zoomed out all the way to 500mm for this one.
Daniel, how would you enhance the eye ring? Brighten it then up the saturation?

[Jim Crosswell]

The repost looks great Shawn! I like the low angle, raised foot, exposure, IQ and BG.