Hi, this is my first time posting on this forum.

In this picture, a young seagull is eating only snow, and its companion is watching it.

I think I got enough sharpness because I captured it in the morning light with a good lens. However, it got rejected with about 2% popularity.

I processed this picture to convey my feeling of confusion—'What is it doing?'—by darkening the sea in the background.

What kind of adjustments could be made to make this photo stand out more?

I’d love to know how to process the photo more effectively in this lighting situation. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

Hello Sota 

Welcome to our forum and thank you for submitting your image. We all started with our first images when we joined 1x. You are welcome to improve your photography on a friendly community. Your first image can be improved but there is no certainty for it to pass the curation process. You should be ready to acknowledge that 1x curation can be sometimes really hard on the photographer. Use the rejections for opportunities to improve your work. If this were my image I would enhance it in the following ways. As the bird in the background causes distraction, I would darken the background. Before darkening a blurring of the background would also be advisable. We want the subject closer.  you might also want to apply a 2:3 ratio cropping to get rid of the black bird. Next a bit contrast and sharpening would help the subject to improve. To me these actions might be enough to improve it. I wish you good light...Cicek

Hi Cicek,

Thank you for your encouragement and thoughtful advice.

I’ve realized that I need to learn more about the basics of photography composition to improve my work.

I included the black bird because I liked the suspicious mood it created, almost as if it were voicing my feelings of strangeness.

However, based on your feedback, I now see that this element made the picture feel "too much." I understand now that sometimes less is more, and I will keep this in mind for future work.

Sota Takahashi,

Thank you for posting the photo in Critique Forum.  Apparently birds will eat snow if they need water - but it is unusual.  If the background is salt water perhaps the gull preferred the snow - although the interenet tells us that many marine birds have built-in desalination filters so they can drink sea water. 

I think the background bird adds a lot to the story as it seems to be watching the snow eating bird.  Its pose suggests that it is curious and surprised.  In my opinion the background bird would look better if it were not cut.  The Content Aware option of Photoshop's Crop tool was used for this sample edit to complete the bird's head.  It wasn't perfect, but the Clone tool smoothed the details.

The other changes were to add some texture to the snow.  That area was selected with the Quick Selection brush, then the Texture, Clarity, and Exposure sliders in 'Filter>Camera Raw Filter' were used. 

The sharpness looks good.   EXIF shows the focal length as 840mm.  It's not easy to compose and focus with such an extreme telephoto. 

I flipped the image left-to-right to see if the composition would flow better that way.  It's an exercise we often suggest.  Observing how the weight and balance of the elements in the photo change when left becomes right helps us understand the composition. 

. . . .  Steven, senior critic

Hi Steven,

Wow, flipping is a great idea—thank you!

It looks like we can control the order in which the viewer’s eye follows the subject by flipping the image.

And we can even extend our photo by photoshop... Such an amaizing technique...

Your suggestion to add texture to the snow was also really helpful. By doing so, the brightness is reduced, making it less distracting while also enhancing the mood by reflecting light beautifully.

I learned so much from your insights—thank you for sharing these great techniques and approaches!

Thank you so much!

By the way, is it okay to upload image used AI expansion to 1x.com for curation...?

Sota,  

Photoshop's 'Content Aware Fill' option has been around for a long time.  It looks at the detail in the image and adds similar detail to the selected area .  That's much like what the 'Clone' tool does.   The new feature is 'Generative Expand', where you can type in whatever you want to be added to the photo.   That is considered 'AI', and not allowed.  In my opinion the simple 'Content Aware Fill' is OK.

 . . . . Steven