Ring-billed Gull

[Dave Leroy]

Flying into wind. I added some space in front and decided to leave the bird pointed upwards, as was the way it was flying. 50D, 400/5.6 at 5.6, Av mode, 1/400, ISO 1600, EC +1. I did normal pp'n and spent a bit extra on eyes and bill. Dave

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Well done considering the very low light. I like the eye contact and wing position. There are some artifacts in the wing tip area.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Dave, You have done everything right and produced the best image that you could in difficult conditions. As is, you needed more depth-of-field for that near wing and/or a much more powerful or pleasing wing post position. Wings full up here would have worked well and reduced the need for more d-o-f.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I agree with the above. Well done considering the conditions. One thing that sorta bothers me is the red cast glowing on the gull - and I also find the red eye-ring oversaturated. For the repost I masked the eye, inversed selection (so the touch-up would not affect the eye for now) and reduced the red channel saturation almost all the way down. As a bonus this also made disappear the red "noise" on the bill. Then I inversed selection again for the eye to be worked on and reduced the red channel saturation on it just a bit.

[Dave Leroy]

Thank you all for your helpful advice.
Axel, I am not sure how the artifact got "introduced" in to the image, perhaps in the conversion from RAW to TIFF or in TIFF to JPEG when dowmsizing?
Artie, wings fully up means more subject within zone of focus.
And Daniel, thanks. I was not sure if I had over done the eye or not. Glad that you picked up colour cast. I have had that comment made before on my photos and I suspect for different colours. I use a freebee download, Color Cop, to try and stay on top of color and can see the difference in repost.
Dave

[Arthur Morris]

Great work Daniel. I did not even notice the red cast until I compared your repost witt the original. Having so many sets of good eyes is a huge plus.