This was one of those images that in the past, I would have just thrown away. Today, thanks to PP, I could fix it. The bird was small, and the background was loaded with geese, including one rammed up against the upper wing of the gull. But in spite of the small size of the gull in the frame, it was so sharp, that the raw file barely needed sharpening, even when viewed at 100%.
So, I cropped it...this is about 1/4th of the D2X frame.. and removed the goose that remained.
I'm putting it in the Hand-of-Man section, as these birds were being fed.
Interesting action and pose you've captured here. Nice job on the exposure as well. This image could have gone in the wild and free forum even though it was being fed. It only goes in here if it's a captive bird or if hand of man elements are visible in the image.
The area where you cloned out the other bird doesn't look quite natural and that cloning was done is apparent. The patterns in the water are dificult to clone and still have them appear natural.
I'm just learning to do some of this more "radical" post-processing, so I'll go back shortly and try to improve this one.
In general, my primary bird-related photographic interest is in their movements. I go for unusual twists and turns, and find this to be easiest with common birds that hang around people. This flock of gulls comes in and spends the winter on a pond near where I live. People feed them all winter (for better or worse!) and then they disappear around March. I take full advantage of their presence because I can get so close to them and hand-hold relatively short lenses (70-200, 300) for maximum freedom of movement. I throw away a ton, but when I get something good, it's worth it. The ballet-like actions of the gulls are amazing. Way too fast a lot of times for me to even see what's going on unless I shoot a burst when I see something coming.
Mary
The pose and action is very nice. Given the size crop, it has held up well. Cloning isn't always easy and the best way to learn is with practice. As long as those gulls are around........keep shooting.
Lana correct. Practice makes perfect both in image creation and post-processing. This type of water will give most persons a hard time removing other birds.
One thing I know do is when taking something like this, I will also image similar water w/o birds and use that as a source to clone in layers into the image I am cloning.
A Gull Dancing?
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