This is what is known as a "safety shot." I went to Oakland Beach in Warwick hoping to get a nice shot of some snow along the shoreline. Despite being a native Rhode Islander, I'd never been to Oakland Beach. Suffice it to say that the scenery did not come close to what I had envisioned. I took a number of shots along the beach - which is about as long as my backyard - but I really didn't like any of them for a number of reasons. Fortunately, on my way back to my car, I spotted these two gulls. The gull sitting in the snow caught my eye since that really had to be a really cold place to perch. It was a safety shot - one to use if the primary shots didn't quite do it. I'm glad I took it.
Post processing in this was relatively simple. Almost all of it involved a series of level and saturation adjustments in multiple layers. I did a 30% soft light blend of copy of the background layer just to add some contrast. To emphasize the wood grain, I ran a copy of just the post and board through my HDR software. I did toy with a couple of photo filters, but in the end I opted to leave it unfiltered.
