Eye

I would really appreciate opinions on the loss of wing tips on this

picture. I think I would have preferred to have a little more to the

left on this image but on the other hand, the position of the eye

rather apepals to me. Any comments gratefully received.

Unusual composition, seems lopped off at first but it grows on one simply because this depiction is very rare, and it's unusual to get so much bird in the frame - frequently they occupy too little of the entire image to have much impact.

 

White on blue works well, some unfortunate artefacts at top. Lighting on gull seems stronger than the ambient light 'feels' if that makes any sense - did you use fill flash?

Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate you taking the time on this one. I have a similar problem with the composition. I can't help quite liking it though even though I lost an important bit of wing. I didn't use fill flash and there are unusual artefacts in it. The ones you mention and the strange dark blue around the cloud. Not sure where they come from because they are not on the raw image. I have only sharpened and exported as jpeg.

Mark, in light of your response, I'd say the jpeg compression is almost certainly responsible for those artefacts.

 

Main thing is that they won't be appearing in the hard copy.

Thanks again for the comments. Weird thing is I tried the process from RAW to jpeg again recently on this image and didn't get a funny blue thing around the cloud. I'll put it down to the phase of the moon!

Wonderful! I like vey much the deep of the blue sky in contrast with the white of the bird.

Very good! The sky contrasts well with the white of the bird. Good light and details.

I don?t like pictures with birds - but this one is excellent and the look of the bird is great - it seems that it likes to be a model.

 

Mark, I've made a comparable photo & wasn't too worried about the wing tips cutoff. It's the eye that makes one spellbound. It's a difficult type of shot. Well done!

i agree, don't worry about the wing tips. this more about the flow of the lines and the white and blue colors. i'd suggest taking the blue saturation down a tad and cropping out the spot of black tip in the left lower wing. otherwise, flat-out excelllent.

Appreciate the comments Ben. Surprisingly, the blue here is out of the camera so I feel loathed to change it. Take your point on the black spot though, it is a bit of a distraction.

Hi Mark,

 

Double 7, no more!

 

Yours, S.M.

I recently read a comment from you @ dpreview, so I thought I'd check your portfolio out. I must say this is an awesome shot. Nice blue and detail galore. I like how the head of the Gull is not covered by shadows. Well Done.

Thanks Derek, nice to meet fellow "dpreviewers" here at PN too. Glad you like this one, it is still my own favourite bird shot.

I had a look at your portfolio too and particularly like your original plane shots. Seems you are doing to planes what I want to do with birds. Like your "Sky crosser" particularly.

I love the composition and the colors.

I like the framing, somehow the unbalanced crop and the turn of the head give this image a strong sense of ambiguity. Seems very symbolic to me. Great capture.

 

Cheers, Keith

Thanks Keith! I still have a soft spot for this shot myself.

I like his pose, suspend in the blue sky. wonderful colors!!

 

Biliana