{"id":17991,"date":"2024-04-21T08:18:45","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T20:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/?p=17991"},"modified":"2024-04-21T08:18:47","modified_gmt":"2024-04-20T20:18:47","slug":"why-bother-photographing-gulls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/17991","title":{"rendered":"Why Bother Photographing Gulls?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Tarapunga\/Red-billed Gull. Good practice at getting a low angle on the beach slick to get a clean background<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On a wildlife photography workshop I attended a few years ago we had a bit of time spare before a booked venue session and a suggestion was made that we could spend the time photographing gulls. This was met with some significant push-back by one of the participants who had less than no interest in photographing gulls. I found that interesting as I often photograph gulls so we obviously had quite different motivations in our photography.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Preening Tarapunga\/Red-billed Gull minimalist high key image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

So why do I photograph gulls? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, I think they’re beautiful and interesting. Despite being threatened they can be quite common and like sparrows<\/a>, their abundance doesn’t make them any less beautiful. Their clean white plumage, contrasting blacks and brightly coloured highlights are gorgeous. I am envious of their flight skills but less so of their raucous habits and dietary choices. They are seldom sitting around doing nothing so interesting activity and behaviours are there to photograph.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Tarapunga\/Red-billed Gull drink fresh water from a small stream flowing across the beach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Secondly, their relative abundance, choice of habitat and activity make them excellent subjects to practice bird photography on. Looking for action, lining opportunities up against good backgrounds and tracking flight are all excellent scenarios to hone your photography skills. Photography and especially wildlife photography, that can present opportunities at short notice, require physical skills that improve with practice. I am alway better when photographing every day than when trying to fit photography in around other commitments. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo of Tarapunga\/Red-billed Gull flying in to join two others on the beach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Having white plumage, gulls are unforgiving of overexposure so are a great subject for keeping on top of all the skills you need for bird photography. If you have a photography trip planned I would strongly suggest spending some regular time photographing gulls in the weeks prior to make sure all your reflexes are up to speed and you hit the ground running when you get to your destination. Wasting precious time getting dialled in just risks wasting opportunities with more rare subjects. Get out there, enjoying watching and photographing gulls. Your serious photography can only benefit from it and you will end up with some lovely images of beautiful birds anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Karoro\/Southern black-backed gull in flight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

These photos were all taken on a short morning walk on the beach with the Nikon Z8 and Nikkor Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Bother Photographing Gulls? Short answer – because they’re interesting, beautiful and great subjects to practice your photography on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Why Bother Photographing Gulls? Short answer - because they're interesting, beautiful and great subjects to practice your photography on. 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Is it an option to just add\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bird Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Bird Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/category\/bird-photography"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo of Weweia\/NZ Dabchick","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/NZDabchick-20230401-NZ9_4559-NEF_DxO-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/NZDabchick-20230401-NZ9_4559-NEF_DxO-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/NZDabchick-20230401-NZ9_4559-NEF_DxO-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/NZDabchick-20230401-NZ9_4559-NEF_DxO-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13268,"url":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/13268","url_meta":{"origin":17991,"position":2},"title":"Mount Maunganui Birds","author":"tony","date":"December 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Common birds photographed on a walk around the base track of Mount Maunganui","rel":"","context":"In "birds"","block_context":{"text":"birds","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/category\/birds"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo of a group of 3 Red-billed Gulls","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Red-billedGulls-D85_3455-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Red-billedGulls-D85_3455-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Red-billedGulls-D85_3455-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Red-billedGulls-D85_3455-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9198,"url":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/9198","url_meta":{"origin":17991,"position":3},"title":"Motuoapa","author":"tony","date":"August 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Motuoapa was the final stop on our trip to Turangi in search of Blue Ducks. Having successfully found our Blue Duck quarry we visited Tokaanu wharf and then heading back north we stopped in at Motuoapa in search of Black-billed Gulls which we had photographed here previously. This time there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "birds"","block_context":{"text":"birds","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/category\/birds"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Black-billedGull-DSC_5905-weblogo.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Black-billedGull-DSC_5905-weblogo.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Black-billedGull-DSC_5905-weblogo.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Black-billedGull-DSC_5905-weblogo.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":16938,"url":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/16938","url_meta":{"origin":17991,"position":4},"title":"Is it a Red-billed or Black-billed Gull?","author":"tony","date":"July 30, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Red-billed Gull \/Tar\u0101punga Recently I was down at the Rotorua lake photographing and I got chatting to a confused overseas visitor who told me that he had reported Red-billed Gulls on eBird and had been \"corrected\" that almost all the gulls on inland New Zealand lakes would be Black-billed. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bird Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Bird Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/category\/bird-photography"},"img":{"alt_text":"Black-billed Gull\/Tar\u0101puka showing longer finer bill","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Black-billedGull-20230429-NZ9_1753-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Black-billedGull-20230429-NZ9_1753-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Black-billedGull-20230429-NZ9_1753-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Black-billedGull-20230429-NZ9_1753-web.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18952,"url":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/18952","url_meta":{"origin":17991,"position":5},"title":"Spitsbergen","author":"tony","date":"June 8, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Spitsbergen - dramatic landscapes and ice formations on our voyage north","rel":"","context":"In "Arctic"","block_context":{"text":"Arctic","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/category\/arctic"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo of Spitsbergen mountains and glacier terminal","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Spitsbergen-20240624-NZ8_0629-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Spitsbergen-20240624-NZ8_0629-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Spitsbergen-20240624-NZ8_0629-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Spitsbergen-20240624-NZ8_0629-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}