Theme: Long-tailed Tyrant

I photographed a lot of birds in Costa Rica in February, and in the last few days I have tried to process them with various filters for this theme, but always decided that the filter detracted from the beauty of the bird. Then I read Denise Ippolito's latest blog on high key images, and realized that a few of the images I took on a rainy, gray day in the rain forest would work really well as high key images. For this image, I used the High Key filter in Nik CEP. It actually improved the image of the bird...it brought out more detail in its wings, and I thought it made the tree pretty interesting as well.

Hi, Wendy, I like this a lot! The high key works well with the image and I really like the black and white treatment. There's a slight halo around the left side of the bird - it should be easy to fix.

Both the tree and the bird are wonderful like this. I've always had mixed feelings about high-key images or any other images with fairly large backgrounds with no variation. However, I like this one so much that I decided to try something with the left side with the thought of retaining all the benefits of a high-key image while making the white area less stark. I finally came up with something that works for me, anyway -- adding some light, widely spaced monochromatic noise to it. I'm glad you posted this.

Very nice, Wendy! I think the high key treatment works really well in this case. It's a nice contrast!

Your processing made this an interesting image. The bird stands out nicely, especially that long tail. The texture of the tree is very nice. What color is the bird? Thanks for mentioning Denise's blog post. I'm going to read it now.

I too have not been a fan of high key because I haven't seen it done in a way that pleases my eye. But this is different. Good choice. Interesting that the hole in the tree, which normally might just blend into the bw of the bird, is darker than the bird, thus added a good contrast. Good adjustments here.

The high key approach worked nicely. The diagonal lines of the bird compliment the vertical and horizontal lines of the tree.

Nice idea that worked very well here! And a very nice composition! I love being able to pull detail out of darks.

Thank you for all of your thoughtful input...I appreciate it. Anita...the bird is black and white, but as Diane said, the high key treatment brought out more details in the bird's black wings.

Wendy, I wanted to think about this one. The high key treatment turned out very well for the bird and the tree. Also a great position on the head with the bird looking away from the tree so those details did not fade away in the darkness of the hole. I would be tempted to shade just a bit of pale gray along the left edge, very soft & uneven, and have it fade into the whiteness.