Black Bird

@Illuci: You can see the "original" camera image here. Not truly "original" I suppose, but the result of importing the RAW file into Photoshop and saving as a jpg file.

@Helma: Thank you.

@danthro: I don't see much green --certainly not any saturated green-- either on my calibrated monitor at home, or my uncalibrated monitor at work. I don't think I'm color blind --at least I wasn't last time I was tested. I can see maybe a touch of green in the feathers just above the tail feathers? And the leaves started out as green and probably retain a tint. Granted, it's not a straight desaturation --I did change RGB channels independently-- but I did it after conversion to B&W via Photoshop. I admit not being particularly good at detecting tints --I used a color analyzer when I did my own printing from film. But again, I don't see it being subject to desaturation, and if I remember the slider positions correctly, there should be a good more blue than green.

BTW, I'm not trying to defend this image. I just want to understand how you're perceiving it and why you appear to see it quite a bit differently than I do. In retrospect, I probably wouldn't post it if I was making the decision right now, but part of why I posted it was to see how others would respond. Generally, if I post something, I like it myself. Here, I like the blackness and sheen on the bird, but I really dislike the tones of the surrounding leaves --which are probably most of the image. I also don't like the bird's head being so much in shadow, but I told myself that the rest of the bird's appearance was compensation. I probably paid too much attention to the composition and the sheen, because otherwise my instinct was not to post it.