Juvenile seagull diving

[Nigel Kibble]

[IMG][/IMG]
Taken with a Nikon D3100 , Tamron 70-300mm Di LD lens , Exposure 1/500 , Aperture F8.0 ,taken Hand held , at full zoom , The gull had just jumped out of the water to dive back in fishing .

[John Chardine]

Yes Nigel, they do this to get down into the water column. Whatever it was eating was some distance below the surface. It's a great indicator of how adaptable gulls are.

You've captured the right moment, which is not easy. I like the fact that the image shows the drops of water just a few milliseconds after it jumped up. For more impact I would crop into the subject some. I see the logic of retaining the ripple circle but it's not that strong, nor is the reflection, so you could afford to crop out. This would emphasize the subject more. The other thing I might do is adjust the colour balance of the bird's body to remove the yellow cast. The ripples compete a lot with the bird, esp. around the head/bill area- a larger aperture might have isolated the bird a bit more against the background.

[Toan Huynh]

You had the perfect moment. I think a little crop will make the object's impression stronger.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Nigel,

Greetings. John's comment has it. Open up a bit (say f/5.6) would get you both less dof and less motion blur with 1/1000th bringing out detail in the wing.

Cheers,

-Michael-