I’m still processing images from my trip to Maine.  This was one of my favorites from my expedition to Machias Seal Island.  It shows a pair of Razorbills in the middle of a courtship nuzzle.  They were so sweet as they did little beak-to-beak nuzzles, and then one (who I’m assuming was the male) seemed to raise his wings in a victory pose.  Maybe that’s the birdie way of saying, “I’m cute!  She thinks I’m cute!”

I love this image for the bird behavior, but also for the crisp lines of the birds’ beaks and feathers.  It’s the kind of image that yields fun results with the Fractalius filter.  That filter is one of the main reasons that I have a Windows virtual machine on my Mac – it’s so much fun to play with!

I loved how the filter brought out the lines on the birds’ beaks.  But I wasn’t happy with it yet.  I continued playing, experimenting with effects from Nik Color Efex and blending modes in Photoshop.  I was just clicking on random effects to see what they did.  I’d never played with the Film Efex filters much, because they tend to add noise and grain.  But in this photo, I really liked the effect…

I went back to Fractalius and played with the random setting button until it produced this next image.  I loved the little star effect near the birds’ beaks, and the colors were really interesting too.

I used this image as the baseline for several more versions.  First I added some color using a Bicolor Filter:

Using image blending, I combined the bi-color effect and the film effect to produce my favorite color image of them all…

Of course, black and white isn’t bad, either!  This one looks a lot better big on my screen.

It’s August and it’s hot out…and it’s raining a lot…it’s an easy time to stay inside in the air-conditioning, processing images!  But I’m anxious to get back out with a camera in my hand.  Thank goodness the cooler weather is coming!