A tough decision, whether to submit this. A little edgier than what I would normally do (if the message was communicated right), and way off what I originally planned - a studio-type, Christian-themed shot. Just didn't have time to do it (even after I bought some of the props (-: ).
I caught this shot on the last day at lunch time, at the Oceanside pier (becoming a favorite location for me). A fisherman threw some live bait down and the gull went after it. At the last minute tonight, I decided to take a shot at trying to use it.
Processing was tough too. I wanted some noticable contrast between the light and dark - the idea being that this act neither good nor evil, or maybe both at the same time. (The last, and only other, time I tried this was with desolation, and it seriously tanked.) Also, sharpening was difficult because of motion blur and a bit of a soft focus. But I wanted sharpness for the contrast. Then there's color, always tough for me. Hope I didn't screw it up...
The title comes from a hidden track on Tools first CD, a dark arrangement which at one point repeats the phrases "life feeds on life" and "this is necessary". I'm not a big enough Tool fan to know what Maynard James Keenan meant; to me it always spoke to the reality of life, death and the feeding of new life by the death of old life - the whole cycle of life thing - as unpleasant a topic as it might be.
Technical: Shot with a 2.4x teleconverter, at full zoom, with circular polarizer and UV filter. Processed in PS: adjusted levels, tweaked the colors a bit with selective color, got rid of some CA by desaturating blues, sharpened/resized/sharpened, added a border.
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The more I looked at this, the more I liked the cropping. It captures the pause in the movement of the bird. The wingspan on these gulls when they are landing still amazes me -( I'm a "beachsider" in FL on the Atlantic so I see them all of the time)
mine...mine...mine..mine, mine, mine,mine,mineminemineminemine
minemineminemineminemine.. anyone seen Finding Nemo. This reminds me of that. Good choice. It's so true and so simple.
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