Seagull Yoga

[Buddhanature]

Good evening!

This is my first post to the critique forums, so my apologies in advance if I've done anything wrong.

I made this photograph this summer on an Alaskan cruise I took. I hadn't started formally studying digital photography yet (and only had a camera for a few months,) so this was more of a snapshot than a carefully planned out image. Had I done it again, I would have paid more careful attention to getting the eyes in focus instead of the breast, as well as getting the entire wing into the frame. As I recall, the bird stood there for quite a long time, so I probably also would have recomposed so that the bird was a bit more perpendicular to the camera, and trying to get that other pole out of the shot.

That having been said, what can I do now to improve on the photo? Should I crop out the feces covered pole or clone out the bird droppings? What about saturation and sharpness? Is the white balance appropriate? I'm new to post processing (used to only have Photoshop Elements 7, but I now am starting to use Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4.) Is there anything else I could have done before making the photo to improve it?



Taken with a Nikon d70S, 70-300mm f/4.5-f/5.6 non-IS lens that I borrowed @ f5.3/250mm 1/1600th exposure. ISO doesn't appear to have been recorded in the EXIF data. I captured it as a jpg, however since shortly after then I have only been capturing in raw format.

[wmbtaylor]

I like the shot. Good job of capturing the "moment." The only things I think I would do would be to clone out the pole with the bird droppings on it and whatever it is in the lower right hand corner of the picture.

It also looks like you clipped off the tip of the wing. If you have the picture with the full end of the wing in it that would look better to me.