Onlooking

I have been looking at a lot of black and white photographers recently, which has inspired a lot of my work. You may have noticed that a few of my images recently have had hints of grey scale, if not fully black and white such as today’s upload. First of all, let me promise that this will be my final falconry image for the next few days!

After the final demonstration had finished, the owner of the birds came over to talk to everyone on the BSR stand, and bought this gorgeous creature with him, as it was the last bird used in the display. It was incredibly well behaved, and stayed perched on the man’s arm for the entirety of the conversation, keeping his owner in sight. As the bird seemed settled, I decided to seize my chance, and take a close up photo. I used my kit lens, as I was too close to use a telephoto. I tried to take the photo from below the bird, in order to convey power.

The top half of the background remains unchanged apart from being turned black and white, but the bottom half of the background was a funfair, which I removed using a combination of the magic wand selection tool, cut, smudge and the pencil to remove finer remains of the background. It took me quite a long time, but it was worth it. It was made much easier by the fact that the sky went from blue to white at the bottom. Having removed the background, I turned the image black and white, then increased the contrast and brightness to make the bird more striking. I’m incredibly pleased with the final image; I think greyscale suited the subject well, and made it more prominent against the background.

Bex

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