Non-captive. Any bird with a black face or head is really hard to expose correctly. You have to either OE by a 1/3rd or 2/3rds at time of shot (and then you run the risk of blowing out any white feathers and the background) or as in this case I shot with an average metering and then bumped the RAW file by +0.3 EV. Then convert to B&W. Nikon's in-camera Active D-Lighting was off. A bit of back lighting and my side of the bird was in shade, helping to minimise the blowout on the white feathers. Normally I'd under-expose with backlighting but the sun wasn't in the shot and the huge hood on the 500mm is sufficient to keep out stray rays. All of which helped make him (or her) stand out from the BG (which was dam water).
ViewNX 2 RAW Monochrome Conversion
Increase EV +0.3
Sharpen +5
Contrast +10
Export to 8 Bit Tiff
Resize
Layer Mask
Curves
Sharpen
Gaussian Blur
Levels
Smart Sharpen
SFW
Are you sure this is not a studio portrait? :)
Very nice capture and processing. Love the variety of textures and patterns on display as well as the curves.
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