not happy with my seagulls

[NewYuppie]

i have this lovely photo, all post-editing done was saturating a bit the colors to get a beautiful sky. but anyhow, even though the birds look beautiful, im not happy by the composition as a whole, i kind of dislike the bottom part where the pier on the other side shows. any suggestions please?
this pic was taken with powershot s200, in boston.

http://www.newyuppie.com/birds.jpg

[Ikinaa]

The gulls are too dark.
and
crop out the bit of land on the lower left, because such a tilt of the bit of horizon is very disturbing

[Radtech1]

I like the birds too. They do seem a little too blue for me, though. Could you whiten them up without blanching out the sky?

As for the pier, there are 3 things that I would take to mind. First, rotate the horizon so it is (dare I say?) horizontal. The problem is that you dont have enough horizon to go across the whole lower edge. So the second thing I would try is to import a different horizon from another image from the same shoot. The third thing, you could use the horizon that you do have and clone the rest. If you do it in pieces, and then blur the buildings, it would likely not be noticed.

Rad

[gsmx2]

You have some options on cropping to try to improve this picture.

First you should crop out the partial-gulls---all of them. Do you like the photo better now?

The next decision is a little tougher....the tilted shoreline in the background is distracting on one hand, but at least it add some color and contrast on the other. So try cropping it out and see if you like the photo better or not.

Lastly, I have to agree that the birds are too dark, so select them with an edge tool and lighten them against the blue sky.

Good luck....but bottom line....I don't think this photo is as lovely as you first might have thought.

gsm x2

[Scottes]

NewYuppie you're in the wrong spot. Are you over by Fort Independence?

Go to Deer Island or Hull in the morning and you'll be facing the harbor with the sun at your back. Or if you're North, East Gloucester facing the harbor. For evening shots you're going to lose too much light blocked by the city.

Get there early so the sun gets under them, so they're lit up rather than silhouetted (10AM is getting to be late for this). Get the sun more-or-less to your back. Now you've got a front-and-bottom-lit bird ready for the picture taking.

If you can, try for wind near a bridge or pier or something. When the wind hits the obstacle it will updraft and the gulls will ride it up, just about pausing in the air. They're also great if you get them near a quahog bed - they take a quahog or clam and fly up about 50-60 feet, drop the shellfish and swoop down to get the now-broken shell.

I'm fairly welled versed in taking bad shots of Gulls in flight. :) But I'm getting better.

Here's a few of my shots of gulls in flight http://www.itsanadventure.com/gulls/. As you can see I didn't always follow my advice. Here's some great shots from our very own CDS: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25997&highlight=quahog

[msol]

I tried a little with cropping to improve composition. I cropped to a rectangle that only contains the four complete birds. The big one is then at the upper to middle left and the two small distant ones are in the lower right corner. All horizon was cropped away. In a way I liked the composition because of the positioning of the elements. However, now we have the big bird looking to the left, so outside the picture. It would have been great if it was looking inside (to the right). So, I copied the big bird to a new layer, swapped it horizontally and then cloned to make the air blend nicely. Here is the quick result. (Should be done all over on the original with more patience :) )
What do you think?

I agree with the others that the lighting should still be worked on.

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=3351373&outx=760&oq=0

[gsmx2]

Msol,

I think that looks much better.

gsm x2

[NewYuppie]

first, thanks for all the feedbacki think the image msol posted with the cropping done is much better, gsmx2 had a great point, i see that the cropped pic is much more appealing
i am in process of post-editing the image now taking all this into account, i have found some backgrounds that im trying to paste into the pic as suggested by radtech.
i am also trying to brighten the gulls but im having a hard time doing that in photoshop because its hard to select the gull and the sky gets all messed up.
i also thank Scottes for the tip on where to do the photographing ive been looking at his pic of gulls and they are all so nicely lit
ill post the finished gulls when im done editing
thanks again guys!

[NewYuppie]

in this edition i took the advice on the cropping, this way the image has more impact focusing on the main subject. i liked the msol edition however i like that the gulls face the same direction.
i had too much trouble adjusting brightness on only the gull so i 83%desaturated the pic and then adjusted the levels and contrast a bit.
i also added some motion blur to the rest of the gulls
this is the final version, its not as pretty colored as the first but somehow it has more impact? thanks for the advice!
http://www.newyuppie.com/birds2.jpg

[Scottes]

I *really* liked the bird in the background - the way it had it's wings is incredible.

The 3rd bird, in the lower right, is now just a smudge. It would look better removed completely.