Grooming Gull

[Rudi van den Heever]

The breaking waves form the BG and laid flat on the beach to get the shot... Image was taken during April 2010...

Location: Sodwana Bay, South Africa
Equipment: Canon 50D and 100-400mm lens at 400mm
Settings: 1/3200 at f5.6 and ISO 200

[cynthia walpole]

Great Shot! Nice detail on the eye. I like being able to see the lids. I really like the red against the grey. Did you up the saturation? It might have lost a bit of detail in the beak, but the red in the legs looks good.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Rudi, I like the low angle and the pose. Nice details. I think you can increase the exposure a bit. There seems to be room in the whites...blacks can use some more details. Increasing the exposure will also help the dark patch in the BG( on the right).

What a beautiful gull.

[Chris Kotze]

Excellent pose and super colours. I like the low angle and BG

[gail bisson]

I agree with Kaustubh's observations. I like the feather between the mandibles and the whites look great. Nice BG,
Gail

[Bill Dix]

Love the pose and comp. Great colors and bg. Might tweak just a bit more detail out of the darks. Personally not crazy about the partial eye membrane, but it doesn't hurt the image.

[girisholeti]

Beautiful colors both on the bird and BG. Lovely preening pose.

[Rudi van den Heever]

Thanks for the advice and comments everyone... Cynthia, I just upped the vibrance slider a bit in CS5 and lightroom - do not use the saturation slider as the colours seem to unnatural to me...

[Mark Young]

Lovely pose. I like the way you composed this image

[cynthia walpole]

I agree. So those are the natural colors. Quite amazing.