Sleeping Seagulls and Sunlit Snow

This was shot very late in the day as the sun was starting to setbehind my left shoulder. I developed this in Kodak D76. The film'spackaging recommended 8.5 minutes but I have read of others going aslong as 12 minutes at the same temperature and for the same EI (100).I think I underdeveloped this roll. Do you have any thoughts on this?

The LARGER VIEW is probably better. Thanks for stopping by.

Walter, if this is underdeveloped them good, the tonal range in the snow is great, going longer may have just blown it all out. As it is the photo is well composed, neatly disected horizontally into 3 areas and the stone 'pier?' draws my eye nicely to the sleeping birds.

 

I'm also about to start using D76 (Ilford ID11 actually) to develop HP5, I've been using ilfosol until not but I think it's introducing too much grain. Do you use an acid stop, or just water?

There are two things which pull this image quite high for me.

 

The first is the composition of the stones leading us into the image with an almost organic curve...think the spine of some reptile, and leading us toward the line of sleeping gulls. I think the snow here plays an important role in toning down the sharp geometry of the stones, giving a more soothing and sedate compositional weight to this dominating line.

 

The second thing I like is more subtle. We have still gulls, up there, but the snow is full of prints, what suggests indeed that this is the end of the day and their activity, still recorded somewhat in the image, now came to an end.

Ben, I use an acid stop for 30 seconds. Considering that Delta 100 is supposed to be rather fine grained I was surprised to see as much grain in this roll as I had. I applied a Gaussian blur to the sky to smooth it out.

Thank you, and thank you Salvatore, for the observations. Regards.

Walter, I don't know a thing about developing, but this is a great image. Has all the appropriate elements (to horizon 25%, water 25% rock wall to shore 25%, sand 25%), and is very sharp. Of course, the Crown Graphic has something to do with that. Definitely better the larger the image. Cheers.

Barry, thanks! I cropped the top and bottom of this slightly; the orignal composition pretty much followed the "Rule of Thirds". But what the heck, I thought, the semi-pano view and the pseudo rule of fourths that you pointed out here looked okay. Regards.

Walter, this is one of those images that appeals to me but I have difficulty articulating why. In general, I like when a clearly realisistic image works equally well on an abstract level (make any sense?).

 

Regarding the rule of thirds, I'm not sure how you'd apply it here. When you consider the composition is basically four horizontal bands and a curving diagonal line, what would you place on thirds? I've had a similar point of confusion or uncertainty with one of my recent images.

 

With this one, I think you made all the right choices.

Hi Laurie. My comment about the Rule of Thirds really pertained to the original crop in which there was sufficient sky and snow covered beach to comprise three definite horizontal bands: sky, water, and beach. Cropping this the way I did now makes it look like four bands. Is it effective...who knows? Regards.

At first I thought this was the tail of a whale. Even more twist in the rock formation would make it look even more so, but I can see you were constrained by the width of the rocks. Why is it that the seagulls always seem to fly away from me?

I did not think of that; good one Dave! They fly away from me too, I was just lucky this day. Regards.

Nice bit of observation, Walter - made me smile! and I like the composition too.