DSLR Photography Forum

Turkey Vulture eating a dead seagull at the base of Morro Rock

Canon 7DII, 1/1250, F/6.3, ISO 400, 363mm.

Beautiful for sure!

Scrumptious. Ed.

The image appears to have been exposed well for the harsh lighting to retain the highlight areas, but this has resulted in high contrast, and seeming to lose some detail in the dark areas, e.g. between wings and head.

However, the 7DII has a great sensor and it will have captured that dark feather detail, so it could be brought out of the shadows in processing. There is some data still surviving there even in this small posted JPEG, but there should be plenty to work with in the original file.

It looks to me as though a blurred background was processed into the scene, which has resulted in an odd fine banding effect there. Also the blurring does not look evenly applied left and right.

I'm not sure about 'beautiful', but it is a very good capture of one of nature's majestic scavengers cleaning up the environment and, with a bit of work, the good image could be great.

Cheers.
Philip

The blur is all depth of field, not added in post.

The ground on the left just below the bird's tail looks quite sharp, but directly opposite on the right the ground looks very blurred so, presumably, the ground is very uneven, Craig? (Although that doesn't explain the banding.)

Cheers.
Philip

Hi Craig

Love it. Did you get a series of this activity? A shot as the vulture lifted the seagull of the ground might be quite dramatic?

Jeff

I shot 20-30 and there are none with the gull lifted up, the vulture pins it down with a foot and rips pieces off.