Tag: Seagull

Yesterdays Outtakes

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Yesterdays shot wasn’t gained in a single press of the shutter (or screen, since it was take on the iPod). It took a number of attempts to get the seagull close enough, in focus and framed for me to then edit it. Looking at the above image, its almost more like the gull was photobombing me I think!

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Tempted with bread, a few of the seagulls were game enough to fly up and grab the bread from the other half’s hands. I just had to take the shot in focus enough, whilst missing the bread (Im sure I could have edited it out) and after a few shots, I decided it also needed to remove the background – too easy to get a wonky horizon, or get an uninteresting background.

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I do like the closer up one (its the only that close I got) Almost used it, but didn’t, and settled on the final shot below to further edit by content aware stretching the background to make a landscape rather than portrait shot.

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And click here to take us back to yesterdays final edit.

 

 

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Gulls of Flight

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“Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight – how to get from shore to food and back again”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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Take Flight

Take Flight

‘Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding’.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Shot on Sony Nex 5n. Cropped and desaturated in Gimp.

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Western Springs Wildlife

Western Springs

A bit of a wildlife shot from my recent visit to Western Springs. After feeding the mother swan some chips and making it semi-comfortable with me around its cygnets, I got down to their level and snapped off a few shots. In this particular one I also captured some greedy gulls coming in for a landing also.

In Gimp I added a custom version of the National Geographic plug-in filter, cropped, resized and added the top/bottom bars.

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Oi!

I’m pretty sure ‘Oi!’ was the seagulls statement at me as I snapped him in this photo the other day in town.

Summer is sure on its way in Auckland these last few days – of course having faulty air-conditioning at work, taking us to 28+ degrees helps, as does running around in level 2’s in the evening.

Image wise, snapped on the Sony Nex and edited in Gimp. Editing consisted of cropping to square format, desaturating all but the red, and bumping up the sharpening slightly.

As Mondays often are, its been a long day, so I will aim for more tomorrow.

 

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Into the Storm

As I often state on weekdays, I just managed to get a bit of light after work on the way home. I had packed my Nex and its new lens into my bag, hoping to give it a test out. Whilst I did manage that, and got some nice shots (and some flat sundown ones) I wanted to post up something different to my usual nature/landscape. With the lens at 210mm I set about looking for some wildlife. It proved quite still and dull overall tonight.

Just as I was heading back to the car a few seagulls approached and I managed to get off a few shots. With low light and a long lens the autofocus just missed a number of shots, but I did like this one of the bird heading ‘into the storm’.

In post processing using Gimp all I did was push the contrast to make it look more menacing than it actually was. Shot at 210mm, 1/400sec at 1250iso the push also revealed the digital grain of the image. I’m a grain fan in photos (that old film appeal) so am happy letting it sit.

In about 3 weeks I’m off to Fiji for a week, which is pretty exciting as I have never been there. My current dilemma is do I take a bag full of cameras and lenses, or travel more lightweight (with the added benefit of not carrying so much money investment!). I’m leaning towards taking my Ricoh GRD and my Rollei 35. I’ll also have my smart phone to hopefully post a snap each day also. When I went to the South Island last year I only had my Ricoh and Mju 35mm – I think the compact allows you to travel with ease and think more about how to capture the image. What do you all do?

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