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Wow, talk about “tack-sharp”! I would never have guessed that was taken just with your kit lens! It helps that your aperture was at f/10, because the Canon kit lens is not considered a sharp lens. A side effect of the high aperture is the slower shutter speed (1/250 second) which seems to have introduced some motion blur in the flying bird’s left wing. You’ll normally want at least 1/500 second exposure to be sure to freeze movement, and, if possible, 1/1000. I see you had your ISO speed set to 100. If you had bumped up the ISO to say, 400 then you could have still used f/10 but had a shutter speed high enough to freeze motion.
As far as composition, I would probably crop out some of the empty space on the right to create the idea of the bird “flying into” the picture.
Your picture reminded me of some pictures that I took a few years ago before I got my DSLR. Both were taken with a Canon Powershot S3 at a shutter speed of 1/1600 and apertures of f/3.5 and f/5.
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Thanks! Those are really neat pictures. =) I attached some more seagull pictures, so please let me know what you think about these!
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I can see in the first picture that the eye is in perfect focus! Good Job! That’s the one thing that “makes” an animal picture is if the eyes are sharp. You can actually see the eye too, compared to the second one where the eye is just a black blob. Both pictures are nice and sharp.
I notice in the first picture that the horizon is rather skewed. That is a common problem with my pictures that I’m trying to work on, it’s simpler to get it right in the camera than to have to do it every time in post-processing. Also in the first picture, I think you might be able to get a more appealing picture by getting down lower, ideally so that, if anything, you’re looking up at it a little. Also, I think one that shows the feet would add an element of interest.
Those seagulls must be quite tame to let you get that close! The pictures that I attached were taken while my cousins were feeding them, and they were all flying around trying to catch pieces of bread.
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They were VERY tame. I touched one’s tail, and probably could have touched it more, but I was kind of frightened. =)
This has been a good conversation. Thank you @buddingphotographer for your detailed comments.
Seagulls are common so it’s easy to shoot them in common environments with a “snap-shot” look. I’ve seen dozens and dozens of seagull snapshots and almost don’t want to take pictures of seagulls any more because they remind me of the snapshots I see all the time (and even take myself at times). But when they are that close . . . it’s hard to resist.
The first one doesn’t look nearly as snapshot-like because there is a very clear background of clouds without a cluttered shoreline. Gray skies are common at the beach so it’s good that the sky is blue.
The composition is very much center-weighted and the two birds almost merge together into one. Our eyes see shapes first, and the two seagulls combined don’t great a seagull-looking shape. If they were separate from each other, it would be much better.
@James Staddon – Thanks! I actually think that is hilarious though about the color and the shoreline, because I cropped out the shoreline and saturated the grey sky to be blue.
I really like the two solo portraits except for cutting the legs off. The very first photo at the top of this posting is lit from the right putting the gulls face in shadow. All are a little underexposed.
I played with it and dropped the exposure on the image to darken the background and then used an exposure brush to lighted the bird, sharpened, and added a vignette.
- This reply was modified 56 years, 10 months ago by -.
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This bird thing is a lot harder than it looks. You inspired me though so I tried. This is the best I could do…….. so far 😉
- This reply was modified 56 years, 10 months ago by -.
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I am glad I inspired you. =) The first one is my favorite; I like the empty blue sky and the clarity. The second one I like because you are closer to the bird, but the background seems kind of cluttered to me. The color is amazing in both of these though, did you edit these? I also like the light coming through the birds wings.
I took these off of the back of the Jamestown ferry.
Very little adjustment. A little cropping. The first has a vignette and I always shoot RAW so you must sharpen (usually to 60-75 plus noise reduction) and adjust the blacks, whites, shadows, and highlights as required. I usually boost the vibrance to 15 or 20.
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