Between my recent plover and lark offerings I still have a number of nice GIF (gulls-in-flight) images to PP from a couple of weeks ago. Here's a pretty neat one with a full wingspread. This was a perfect evening with both low sun and high winds against my back to create the perfect landing / take-off poses from a rather large colony that comes in to roost for the evening.
Canon 40D + 100-400L @360mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering (metered off resting nearby gull and histogram checked), 1/1600s., f/6.3, ISO 400, handheld, cropped for composition (about 80% FF), OOF gull cloned/patched out from behind wing (close to my signature).
Sweet on all counts including fully spread wings and light. An all blue water BKGR would have been a plus.
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I saw one of your previous gull in flight images a little while back and it was pretty sweet. While I really enjoy the wingspread, nice light, and perfect exposure and sharpness here, the merge line between the dirt and the water is just a bit too sharply defined for my taste, and leads me to prefer the previous Ring-billed image. This is just preference, and all that really matters is that you like it.
Well done, and I'm looking forward to more images!!
Its all been said , great light, exposure, wing position, I also like the pose and good defenition in the whites. Would also like a littlle more room at the bottom.