Mew Gull

[Craig Wallace]

Taken at Newport Ore. Late afternoon, overcast windy day.
D2xs 80-400vr at 400mm, f/7.1 1/640, iso 400, matrix metering, aperature priority, wb cloudy, on tripod. ACR, CS4, shadow/highlights, levels, curves, hue/saturation, selective color, smart sharpen. lighten eye, desaturated blues. comments and suggestions always welcome. thanks for looking.
craig Happy holidays.

[Julie Kenward]

Nice gull, Craig. I like the BG but one thing to try to watch is getting a wave right across the back of his head. If you can avoid that next time (also happens with the horizon line so be careful there, too!) it will strengthen your composition.

It seems like the dark bird feathers and darker areas of the BG have quite a bit of noise going on. The water looks a little oversharpened so go back, remove the sharpening and check the noise in those dark gray feathers and see if they came from sharpening or if they are due to a low exposure. If if happened while sharpening, resharpen slowly in steps and see when the noise gets introduced.

Nice movement and HA on the bird and you did a very nice job with your choice of crop and the position of the bird in the frame.

[Dave Leroy]

I like the nice pose of the bird.

Jules covered a lot and only thing I might add is to lighten the eye and add a tad more colour to it.

Nicely focused.

Dave

[pat lillich]

beautiful bird - lovely detail in the white feathers against the grey feathers of the side --- good advice from Julie and Dave, would love to see a repost....