Juvenile Yellow legged gull Portrait

[shane shacaluga]

This bird has taken up residence at the raptor rehabilitation unit I visit on many afternoons. It has been scavenging on the leftovers and become quite tame in the process. I took this image after it had eaten a large meal and was basking in the sun.

D800e
300f4 + 1.7x TC
f6.7
1/2000
ISO 800

Did some beak cleaning as explained in Arties Digital Basics and then the usual PP, NR on BG and USM on subject. For some reason the shadow under the chin and breast had a blue tinge to it which i selectively removed using a masked hue/saturation layer.

Comments and critiques welcome.

Thanks for viewing

[Doug Brown]

Nice eye contact, detail, and BG. I would have gone with more DOF and less SS to get the wing in better focus.

[Diane Miller]

I love headshots and this one works very well for me! I don't mind the wing being soft, since the head is so sharp. It leads me in instead of competing.

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice exp. and BG. I agree with Doug that more DOF would have been better here

TFS

[Shawn Zierman]

Nice eye level image of this gull, with great eye contact, and looks sweet against the clean warm green bg....I can see the point about more dof...Would have looked at backing up just a couple of feet to get the increase in dof...

[shane shacaluga]

Thanks for all your comments guys

To be honest I had set myself up to try and catch a local peregrine flying across a cliff and while i waited this seagull landed on a wall very close by. I liked the background so popped a few shots without really thinking about DOF etc. We consider these gulls pests here, but really they are very nice-looking birds. Will keep DOF in mind next time I try a close up portrait shot ;)

Again its always a pleasure to learn from you all. Best money I spend on my camera hobby each year is BPN subscription ;)