The winds on the lake can have a hard, constant velocity. Gulls will face into the wind and just soar in one place. This image is deceptive: the birds are only about 2 or 3 meters from the ground and not moving at all.
Self critique: A little too much contra-shading under the wings; head angle is acceptable; crop is in this mode as the bird's interest is off to the right. PP: added some canvas to the right of the image. Used a mask to isolate the sky and darker mountains; create layer and then adjusted with curves to increase contrast between sky, dark mount and fore-ground mountains. This layer is then blended with bottom layer. Two adjustment layers were used to apply global contrast to image; second layer is use to satureate colours ( I don't use saturation aplet, I have my own method, will divulge later): Dodge burn layer.
EXIF Camera: Canon 30D Lense: EF 100-400 IS L (focal length 100mm) Mode: Apeture priority ISO: 200 White bal.: custom 5500K Exposure: 1/1600 @ f 6.3 +.33 comp, ambient light
Thank you for sharing your PP job here Mark. I like the pose of the gulls and the BG is terrific and very dramatic. It works well with the gulls instead of the fact that it seems not a very common BG for a gull (it looks like a desert). I do like a lot the combination of gulls and BG but I thnk that it would be much better if the birds were placed against the sky and not overlaping with the horizon line.
Ring-Billed Gulls
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