Redwing experiment

Redwing by the canal at Crossflatts, West Yorkshire November 2008

I love the pose on this one, but the background is extremely busy and competitive. I tried various ways of mitigating, such as tight crops, but removing the colour from the background seems to work best.

Anyway does it work for you?

Techs
20D 400mm F5.6, x2 teleconv, tripod. F13 1/800th ISO1600. 3/4 of the frame. Cropped in Lightroom, BW conversion and sharpening/denoising in Photoshop CS4

John

John

The redwing image is great but for me on a personal note the environment as is every time. My knowledge is very limited but I know what I prefer.

Barry

Hi John,

Personally I love this effect . OK, not for commercial images but to give a pic a different look when it's hanging on a wall.

I would try and give the berries a bit more oooomph, just to make them a bit redder, but colours on the Redwing are good.

A nice change from the norm and thanks for posting.

If it's not to much trouble would you mind posting or sending me the workflow to gain this effect.

Regards

Rob

Works nicely for me. Keeping the colour in the berries as well as the bird is a very nice touch.

David

I like! It's something a bit different, and somehow gives it a wintery feel.

Nice!

I absolutely love this treatment. It has made a reasonable picture much better IMO, by lifting the subject out of a cluttered BG. I am sure it won't be everybody's cup of tea but it works for me all day long, especially as grey is very much a winter hedgerow colour anyway.
Eric

Hi John,

For me this is a great enviro shot and the bird still pops well! A marketable image IMO!

It is very dramatic, I like it very much, but I would like to see the original too!!

Here is the original pic Kim.

Rob I don't remember exactly how I got the BW effect, it was quick to do - and there are so many ways of doing these things. It was something like this

All in Photoshop. First just did the pic as good as I could to give a normal pic. I then used the lasso tool to roughly select the bird. Holding the shift key down then added further selections of the berry groups again just rough selections. Next at the selection menu I chose invert (its the background we are messing with)

Then I choose a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Because of the selections a rough mask had been created for the adjustment layer. For the master setting I just pull the saturation down to zero.

Now we can see the rough effect on the background. From now on it is a matter clicking on the layer mask icon for the adjustment layer and using a black or white fine brush (controlling brush size with the bracket keys to right of the letter P) to add or remove colour precisely. For the really fine work probably zoomed in 200% or so.

Hope that gives an idea - John

Hi John

Both are nice but I do feel you have achieved what you set out to do in the first post as the bird really 'pops' Looks like someone else has their Xmas Card sorted!

David

When I first saw the original I was unsure about it but having seen the original I think you have made a good job of creating something different. Nice to have the workflow explained as well.
Robert

when i saw the first image i was thinking the complete opposite to everyone else, but then saw the original all i have to say is i love it!

good to see something different i also like the idea of using some B+W in wildlife shots where appropriate good one!