Taken at Coronado Beach in California, during a spectacular sunset. It's a Heerman's Gull on wet sand, lit up by the setting sun. I set the white balance to K8000 and didn't do much else in the optimization besides a levels adjustment, a spot removal, and a tiny canvas rotation. Edited to add: ditch or keep that one bright line near the back of the head?
7D mkII, 100-400 IS II zoom at about 175mm, hand held
1/400 @ f/5.6, ISO 800
DPP/Photoshop
Looks very nice. K8000 seems perfect for this kind of shot. I would lose the line for sure. Also I think it would be better if the bird and the reflection of the bird were about the same shade of black. As it is the bird looks jet black but the reflection looks way lighter. Not sure if you reduced the exposure on the bird or if that is how it really was?
Both the reflection and the bird are coming up as 0-0-0 on my computer, so I'm not sure why it's looking like different shades on your screen. In any case, I did a line removal for the re-post: