Everyone please extend a warm welcome to our newest group member--Donald Miller   Posted: 08/01/2026 21:34:59

Welcome to the group Donald and look forward to seeing more of your images.

What you presented here is a pleasant environmental photograph. It captures a nice moment, and you did a nice job with the exposure - no blown whites despite photographing white birds - good job with that.

The background is pleasantly soft & the focus is acceptable but the image is not critically sharp. For future reference, this is a great learning forum, and I think you would be well-served to include the camera type, the focal length used and your settings with every image. I mention this because I suspect your shutter speed may have been a little slow for the subject - just something to keep in mind.

Having said all that, the landing pose IS THE image. The gull's wings fully spread creates a graceful "T" that catches the eye. So good job nailing the decisive moment. You also captured a nice color palette. Meanwhile, something to consider in the future aside from detailing your equipment and settings is that the incoming gull dominates the scene, but few species have photogenic backsides :-) and with the star of the show facing away the viewer's eye tends to wander among all three birds. Also, bird photography almost always benefits from seeing the eye, especially one that's tack sharp. Nonetheless, you captured "a moment."

Once again, welcome to the group :-)
  Posted: 08/01/2026 21:49:21

You have captured a 'Decisive Moment" of a seagull landing among "friends" on a beach. This this type of image show an interaction among members of the same species and is considered by PSA to be a strong nature story. Since you are new to PSA I will add that PSA believes Nature images should should always include a story. So you did well by including a story in your first image. Technically, the histogram shows the image has some clipped highlights and is close to being overexposed. This is quite common when an image has a lot of white areas with highlights and few dark tones. Using exposure compensation may help in these situations. As Butch noted your image is "nearly sharp" but not critically sharp as it should be. Shooting i mages such as this with the subject moving away from the camera you need to maintain focus lock even while actually shooting. Using a setting called back button focus can help with this. You might consider looking this up in your camera manual or locating a Youtube video to help you set it up. Since your shutter speed was certainly fast enough to capture a sharp image you must have lost focus lock during the shooting process. While rules can always be broken, Butch mentioned that it is generally best NOT to feature Butt Shots and to include a sharp eye in your subject. (You might look at Anne's lioness image to see how rules can be broken effectively) I think you crop is excellent as you removed potential distractions. In the end, I feel you captured that all important Decisive Moment and since the pending landing is that moment, you did a great job in that respect.

I'm looking forward to next month's image.   Posted: 08/02/2026 18:55:24

Don,
I think Butch and Larry have given ou some great points to consider. I would only add that you should avoid images of gulls in this case that merge. The right wing of the bird landing overlaps with the bird on the right. This can cause visual confusion to your viewer. But above all KEEP SHOOTING!!   Posted: 08/07/2026 18:10:28

Welcome to the group, Donald!
I joined only a few months ago myself and have found the critiques here very helpful. They've encouraged me to look more closely not only at my own photography but also how and why other photographers make their choices.
You captured a nice moment here, especially the position of the incoming gull's outspread wings. I would consider a tighter crop from top and bottom to focus more attention on the birds, still keeping the birds off-center. I would also try to bring down the highlights a bit to get more separation of the birds from the water, and more detail in the whites. I look forward to seeing more of your work!   Posted: 08/10/2026 21:57:25

Welcome to the group!
Birds in flight are definitely challenging, but it does get easier with practice. Lots of good advice already given here.
I'll add an alternative crop suggestion. In your crop the subjects are quite centered and there's a lot of empty space. I put the birds more off-center, with the space in the top and right to work with the direction of the implied motion of the landing gull.
  Posted: 08/16/2026 17:34:34