B&W, tinted, glowing Cranes

[Dan Brown]

I shot this Crane pair at Bosque and although the birds are nice, the bg and overall setting was not doing much for me. So, I added a couple Nik and Topaz filters to it then added a color range mask, selecting some of the reds in the image, creating a "tinted" B&W.

I am still having fun processing the images from my first Bosque trip last November with Kerry Perkins! Such a great trip. Great bird photography opportunities as advertised. And it was really fun to finally meet some current and past BPN'ers!

[Nancy Bell]

Super depiction of the cranes! Love the softness and the blurring with the soft grays and those few well placed hits of white for a bit of definition. Having the red heads and the yellow eyes as the only colors makes this eye-catching. Those brown, stubby fields make a terrible background and this rendition makes that all go away into soft, lovely faint lines. I would consider removing those few bits of distracting reddish color coming from a branch going through the tail end of the left crane. Good dynamic poses on the birds.

[Dan Brown]

Thanks, Nancy! I agree with you about the distracting color of the branch. Here's a RP with it removed. I actually did this right after I first posted and was confident that you all would agree! :-) The reddish color that is left is actually part of the bird's plumage.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Dan, I'm glad you removed the reddish branch. Did you notice the shadow on the right crane - it is a perfect duck head

[Diane Miller]

Very nice!! And a great way to deal with what I imagine was a less than ideal BG.

With strong processing like this you can often do a better (less obvious) job of removing unwanted details in the original image, before processing, rather than afterward.

[Anita Bower]

I like what your processing did for the birds. I did wonder if they were getting dizzy with the surrounding squiggles. :-) I'm glad you deleted the branch, but I think it wasn't completely deleted, as I still see it in the second image. I like the grey and white tones, with the little bits of color.