gull in flight

[mikehawthorne]

seagull taken from moving ship handeld with km 5d and sigma 70-300lens

[Birma]

That's a lovely crisp shot Mike - I like the grey sea in the background.

[aster]

Hi Mike,

It has painting-like appearance with that dramatic background...Nice capture from a moving ship.

Thanks for sharing,
Yildiz

[mikehawthorne]

thanks for the comments , the standard of photos on this sight is always very good so to get good comments about my stuff is praise i take proudly.

mike hawthorne

[cenwyn]

Great pic, well frozen. what was the focal length?

Rachel, my wife, has a Minolta D5, She still loves it. This was the reason why I entered the Alpha age.

Thank you.

[UrsaMajor]

seagull taken from moving ship handeld with km 5d and sigma 70-300lens

I think that the 5D and 7D were somewhat under-appreciated in regard to photos like this. I have a couple of seagull images taken on a whim using my 7D and the Minolta 70-210mm f:4.0 "beercan" lens.

I had always heard that the 7D was not very good for moving subjects, and that the "beercan" would focus too slow to be useful for moving subjects. Accordingly, I did not expect any usable images when I saw a flock of gulls moving toward me one day while I was at a local park with the 7D. Purely on a whim, I aimed at a couple of the birds and took only four shots. Much to my surprise, they all turned out reasonably decent, although two of them caught the bird at an angle that really had no feel of grace and flight. The remaining two images are attached below.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[mikehawthorne]

hi tom
i agree, and they were only 6mp, nice shots by the way i spent some time in southern california could not get over the size of the place. i loved it.

mikehawthorne

[Dr. Harout]

great catch.

[Dusty]

Tom, I like the fist one. It makes the gull look like it's in attack mode, like a hawk.

Dusty

[UrsaMajor]

by the way i spent some time in southern california could not get over the size of the place. i loved it.mikehawthorne

The size of the Southern California area is a challenge for me to accept also. I grew up in the eastern US, in a city of 50,000 people that is located in hilly terrain where you could not see more than a few miles except from the top of the tallest hills. Even after living here for 45+ years, the scale of things in Southern California can still be overwhelming at times.

BTW, should you have the opportunity to see it, there was a series on television here recently that is titled "America's Best Idea" - a documentary series about the National Park system of the U.S. One of the things mentioned in that series was the impact that photography had upon the creation of the park system by bringing images from far away to the halls of power in Washington, D.C. This television series came to mind just now because one of the statistics it mentioned was that the National Park Service is now responsible for parks with a total area of about 365,000 square kilometers - which is an area slightly larger than all of Germany, and about 1.5 times the total area of all of Great Britain. Photography was far from the only factor in the creation of our park system, but it also played a significant part in that creation.

FWIW, the Park Service has a web page worth visiting by anyone at:

http://www.nps.gov/

And those living in the US - or visiting the US that week - might be interested to know that admission to every one of the 392 National Parks will be free during the week of April 17-25. Details are available at:

http://www.nps.gov/npweek/

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[UrsaMajor]

Tom, I like the fist one. It makes the gull look like it's in attack mode, like a hawk.

Thanks Dusty. I have the same reaction to that image, although I have both of them as part of the slide-show program on the screen-saver of my computer at work.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[aster]

Hi Tom,

Very sharp and expressive captures indeed. The light passing through the pan of tail feathers is lovely and creates a translucent sharpness.

It looks like it spotted a fish or an other edible sea creature already and is about to make a dive.

Thanks for sharing,
Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

The OP's image works for me despite the noise, just because it's exactly typical of a gull cruising past and the dull grey oof sea adds to the impact.
Tom I like the last one of your's because the gull has flaps, slats, ailerons and airbrakes all deployed at once...good one.
Greg