Bonaparte's Gull Pre-Flight Stretch.

[Daniel Cadieux]

It was a treat to photograph three adult Bonaparte's Gulls in breeding plumage recently as we normally only see non-breeding individuals or juveniles. Two of them took off without notice, and I knew the third was going to follow soon after so I immediately pointed my lens to it. This is near full-frame so needless to say I badly clipped/cut the actual take-off...but I am more than happy with this one!

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/2000s., f/8, ISO 400, natural light, handheld, toned down some of the whites, darkened the pupil.

[Karen Pleasant]

Dang! Very nice!!! Love the upstretched wings! Excellent DOF and exposure control! Wonderful eye contrast and detail. The sliver of DOF renders the foreground and background wonderfully OOF. An excellent image to illustrate what we should all strive for! TFS!

[christopher galeski]

Nice image,like the soft light and POV,some nice detail,like the raised wings.TFS.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Exceptionally nice image with the wing position and the blue tones in the BG.
TFS Dan!

[adrian dancy]

Very nice indeed Daniel and I agree with all comments above. A rare bird in our parts and sadly I have never made the effort to photograph.

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Amazing, amazing pose and what a perfect shooting angle. I'd run light NR on the fb/bg, but oh man, what a killer image.

[gail bisson]

Love this one Daniel.
Beautiful wing pose and a great color palette!
Gail

[John Robinson]

Great handling of the whites Dan. Love the undulating wave below the bird too.
JohnR

[dankearl]

I love the angle and the wave ripples.....

[Gabriela Plesea]

Very beautiful, Daniel!

Love the composition and colours, as well as this dreamy quality of this image, techs 100% , well processed and presented - superb capture

Kind regards,

[Lorant Voros]

Simple and beautiful. Very well done. Perfect exposure, nice details and super dream like color setting.

[Bill Dix]

I agree it's nice to see him in breeding plumage, which we don't get to see here. Great pose (floating flight?), good exposure, low POV, colors.

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent exposure, low angle and details Dan!

[Ágúst Svavar]

Beautiful shot. First thing that grab my attention was the wing position, really like it. Nice low angle and light aswell, great work!