Ivory Gull

[Richard Stern]

This "once every10 years" rarity has been seen in the vicinity of a fish plant in Sambro, Nova Scotia. I had some challenging conditions for photographing it today - minus 18 deg.C., and extremely strong , low sunlight, plus the bird which was cooperative in that it stayed close, but uncooperative in that it stayed in a spot where it was impossible to move into a better lighting situation. But the semi-sillhouetted effect seemed quite pleasing to me. I tried fill-flash a few times, but couldn't seem to get it right.

When I read up on this rare species in Birds of N.America Online, one of the most interesting cited references was to a study by BPN's John Chardine.

D300, Nikon 80-400, ISO400, 1/3200, f7.1, matrix metering, EV -0.7

Richard

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great find, details and beautiful specimen. Too bad about the harsh sidelight. Fill flash might have helped. Could you have moved lower to have the roof at eye level?

[Don Lacy]

Beautiful Gull I think you did well with the conditions.

[John Chardine]

Ah Richard- very nice to see. I had not heard of the one in NS. May go down to see it!

You did a good job here and have really captured the "dove-like" appearance of the species. I saw lots of them 15 years ago when I was in the Arctic but there are far fewer now. I was pleased to play a small role in the process that eventually led to the listing of the species.

[Arthur Morris]

Considering the raking side-light and a bird on a shingled roof you did quite well. The head angle is great and you have detail in the whites. Advice for flash in these situations: use a Bbetter Beamer and try the flash at +1. (Make sure that you have set High Speed Synch (or whatever they call it on the Dark Side).

Great bird--it would be a life bird for me.

[Grace Scalzo]

Such a beautiful bird. I would clean up the roof by first trimming it to above the gutter, and then quickmasking, cloning, and/or using the patch tool on the poop. Then I'd select the bird, select inverse, and blur the roof a bit, just to make it look as good as possible. This bird warrants it!