Thanks for the comment. There were flares when I took this shot - and they really had no impact on why I did it. When you shoot in infrared, you can't always predict what the images is going to look like on non-vegetation items. The WB was present for green folage, and the sky was nearly black (actually dark brown). I liked that the seagull had its mouth open. The idea came to me that this bird survived a nuclear blast, and lived in a radiation enviroment that had a red sun.
I wonder what the inspiration behind this image is. I like the exposure caught on the bird, Personally, I am trying to figure out if the light source with the added flares help tell the story of the image. were any of the flares already there? I would have tried to aim for the flares to be around the bird perhaps, in line with your title, If they weren't there, I do like the fact they are believable though perhaps a bit too round, I have found my flares aren't quite that round (and I try to get rid of these, so well done for bucking the trend, as they say in photography, the rules are there for breaking.