Gull On A Painted Background

[SCraig]

Not really

This Ring-Billed Gull was wheeling around with some of his buddies just enjoying the morning sunshine for the first time in a week. The background is natural and un-retouched. It's left over trees from last fall and is actually the background of the photograph, but it does sort of look like it was painted in.

 

[cgipson1]

Nice image, Scott!

 

[ceeboy14]

I think it is quite a nice shot but would nitpick to a little more bottom to give the gull room to dip.

 

[SCraig]

Thanks for the comments guys. I appreciate it.

Ceeboy14, I tend to agree however if I open the crop any more it gets into some lighter areas on the left that I don't like and wasn't able to blend properly, plus I don't want the bird any further to the left of the image. I also prefer a standard 2:3 crop so I just left it cropped tightly to the bird's wingtips.

 

[Tony S]

Yep, a little mroe room around it is needed........ if you were to put it in a frame the wings would be clipped.

 

[Mully]

Nice..... like the bkg color

 

[thetrue]

If you open the crop anymore to keep the 2:3 ratio can you retouch the light part? I know you want to keep it natural, but the image might benefit from it.

 

[coastalconn]

Nice shot.

 

[SCraig]

Thanks, guys.

I'm not concerned about it being clipped if it were framed, I never print anything

I'll play around with it some tomorrow and see what I can do. The tree that is just becoming visible in the left side of the image gets very light very quickly and I didn't like the way it looked. I wasn't able to blend it the way I wanted either, but I'll play with it some more and see what it looks like.

 

[Radical]

Love the shot Scott.

 

[SCraig]

Love the shot Scott.

Thanks, I appreciate that. I wish I had given it a bit more room as others have mentioned, but I got what I got

 

[SCraig]

OK, Take #2

I had more room around the bird than I remembered, and in reality still have some more. The trees on the left blended fine after I played with them a little bit so they turned out not to be a problem either.

Regardless, I agree that your wisdom was absolutely right and it does look better without the bird so cramped in the frame. Thanks to everyone for the help and guidance. Sometimes it just takes a bit of prodding to make us do things we don't always want to do, and I appreciate the prod

 

[WesternGuy]

Scott, the second one is much better compositionally than the first one. There appears to be a little bit of noise in the background, but it can be tolerated. This would be a wall hanger if it was mine.

WesternGuy

 

[SCraig]

Scott, the second one is much better compositionally than the first one. There appears to be a little bit of noise in the background, but it can be tolerated. This would be a wall hanger if it was mine.

WesternGuy

I agree. That's to the prodders it is better

There may well be some noise in the background since I don't remember doing any noise reduction on it (I'd have to look, it's early, coffee isn't ready yet). Shots like this I normally do a very heavy noise reduction on the entire image which really serves to just smooth the background slightly. I then go back and remove 75% on the main subject to clean it up and leave a little noise reduction. I don't recall doing that to this shot so it's probably straight from the camera as far as noise goes.