First attempt at a seagull in flight

[Surprised]

We were on a small ferry to a little Scottish island and there was nothing much else to do expect experiment with a camera. The seagulls were following us, probably hoping for the odd fish in the ferry's wake; and capturing one in flight seemed to be a good challenge. It wasn't easy! Doubtless there are better ways of doing this but I tried to get my camera to 'lock in' and focus on one particular bird, and then follow it round until I could get a reasonably-composed picture. I must have looked rather silly doing this odd sort of dance on the ferry's deck! And I ended up with several shots of undefined sky!

But I ended up with this one which I was quite pleased with. I'd appreciate feedback in particular on how best to get this type of picture -- are the camera's settings sensible for what I was trying to do?



Many thanks for any comments you're able to give!

EXIF data
Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ28
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1000)
Aperture: f/3.7
Focal Length: 53.2 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Taken at 3:00pm BST

[RecurrentNerve]

Shot is nice and sharp. I'd experiment with different positioning of the gull (if you can); while the space to the left gives space for the gull to 'fly into', its pose suggests it's floating in place rather than flying along. It might look better with space below the bird.

[Laurenbiz]

This is quite nice!

I agree with the last comment that the bird should have a more open area to 'fly into.' Some cropping changescould help with this, or making your sky background larger on a larger canvas. If you use Photoshop, you could use the clone stamp tool to extend parts of the sky leftward.

Nice work :-)

[Surprised]

Thank you, RecurrentNerve and Laurenbiz, for your comments. As I recall, the gull actually was 'floating' rather than flying! The wings were fairly still for much of the time.

The shot above is SOOC (I don't have Lightroom or Aperture yet...) without even any cropping. Perhaps the lesson for me here is to shoot with more background so that I have more scope for cropping later. Whilst I really appreciate your feedback, I'm intrigued that you seem to disagree slightly on how I should extend the shot -- should the extra be below the bird, or to its left? Or both?!

But thank you again to both of you for taking the time and trouble to post your thoughts.

[RecurrentNerve]

Shooting with more background of course means you would lose a bit of detail on the gull. Rather, take advantage of digital's high capacity and shoot plenty of shots with the gull in different positions.

As the gull is nice and sharply defined it would be a good candidate for copying into a different image with more sky and playing around with that. I think it would be quite effective as a long, narrow, vertical image with the gull at the top above a column of sky. Free software like GIMP would handle it easily.

[Surprised]

Thanks for your suggestion, RecurrentNerve, and sorry for the delay in replying (I've been away for a few days as we have just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary). I've not experimented much with pp in the past but I may well now do so with this pic following your suggestion -- so many thanks for taking the time and trouble to post!