Silver Gull

[Glennie Passier]

Young adult Silver Gull (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae). A beautiful bird, but because of it's ability to adapt to our civilized wastefulness, it has become a very dominant sea bird.

Interesting catch light. It's in the shadow of his brow. A little HA would have been better than the perfect profile.

Basic adjustments in ACR. BG smoothing and cropped for composition in PS. Smart sharpened for posting.

5D2
Sigma 150-600mm @ 400mm
f7.1 @ 1/1250 sec
ISO 250
Hand Held

C&C Welcome and appreciated.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the profile pose and ultra clean surroundings. Good whites, details. Re: head angle: A better head angle would only have been better had the sun not been from the left.

[annmpacheco]

Hi Glennie, love the serene mood and the color palette. Details look terrific and i like the smooth sand and how it melts into the BG, i think its quite nice! well done.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the pose, sharp.

Did you blur the BG in photoshop? it looks artificial to my eye.

TFS

[David Salem]

I agree it's nice and sharp and I really like the pose and the smooth background. Not a big fan of side lighting but works pretty well here. Well done

[William Dickson]

Well done Glennie Great POV and the details are amazing. Good work.

Will

[Glennie Passier]

I like the pose, sharp.

Did you blur the BG in photoshop? it looks artificial to my eye.

TFS

Thank you Arash. Yes. The BG has been softened in PS. There was a spot, behind his legs, that blended into the colour of the sand. That area has been darkened to allow the form of his body to show. Some little scratch marks in the sand in the same spot also removed.

The last thing in the world I want is for an image to look phoney. Have I overdone this?

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Glennie,

This is what I tell folks about blurring the BG:

IMO blurring the BG doesn't work, it makes the image look artificial to the trained eyes. Why? simply because the blur created by the aperture blades of a lens is not Gaussian. Blur in photoshop is a Gaussian blur, therefore the two are easy to tell apart. Even without reading your description I knew the blur looked artificial, especially how it blends with the foreground and suddenly becomes sharp.

I am interested to see how the RAW file looked like without blurring, my guess is it looks better without blurring

hope this helps

[Marina Scarr]

I am with Arash on this. My first thought was: "This image looks surreal." The exposure is spot on and you have great details and colors.

[Glennie Passier]

Thank you for you help Arash. This is the original file. My intention was to rid the frame of the disecting lines. I have some others that were a few seconds after this. I'll see if I can't process a bit better. As my skills improve, I feel I will notice these things before I shoot.

[arash_hazeghi]

I think this one looks much more natural than the one with the PS blur. I'd just get rid of the bright circle near the head