During a late fall photo period in Arizona a few years ago, I found a beautiful chocolate-colored hawk in central Arizona among a nice diversity of birds of prey concentrated in an agricultural area immediately east of the last houses in northwest Phoenix at that time. The raptor hotspot attracted such exciting birds as Peregrine Falcons, a female Merlin, a first-year Ferruginous Hawk, and a variety of western Red-tailed Hawks. Among the Red-tails was the big first-fall dark morph Red-tailed Hawk that I had on my radar for a few days, when the brown beauty provided occasional perched and flight photos when our paths crossed.

For birders, it’s always exciting to be pleasantly surprised by a spectacular photograph when reviewing a day’s images from the field. Eventually this photo of the dark morph Red-tailed Hawk in flight graced Paul’s office wall (400mm zoom lens, f-7 aperture, 1/2500 shutter speed, 400 ISO.)

While reviewing photos on my computer screen, a particular photo of that attractive hawk immediately caught my attention. The hawk was in a most expressive slow banking flight, and I took the photo just as the raptor angled to show its backside from head to tail with its wings and tail fully spread in just the right way to get the full effect of the illuminating sunlight. It also shows the full side view of its face as it turns in my direction – all beautifully in focus.

This photo is back-lighted; that is the sunlight is coming from a position behind and slightly in front the hawk. In the field, the camera’s light meter reacted positively; that is, rather than turning the chocolate-brown hawk into a black silhouette, the meter thankfully reacted to the dark plumage by highlighting the color brighter, showing the markings on the extended wing and tail feathers. The photo is clearly enhanced by that back-lighting, which enhanced the contrast between light and dark bands of the flight feathers of the wings and tail.

The Creative Process

Sometime after cropping the photo a bit, I had an enlargement of the photo printed, which I hung in my home office while living at the beach in San Diego. One evening, while relaxing after a day in the field monitoring nesting activities of a variety of birds in the mountains east of San Diego, just north of Mexico, a great creative idea came to mind. While momentarily studying the enlarged print of the dark morph Red-tail, I wondered about copying the original digital photo on my desktop screen, and making an “opposite” negative image of it.

A creative idea came to mind one evening: Starting with the printed flight photo that showed the fully spread flight feathers, face, and body in just the right positions, Paul thought it would be interesting to make a mirror image using photo editing software. And that’s when the magic happened: He also turned the mirrored photo into a negative image, which proved to be a remarkable creation in itself!

Using Paintshop Pro photo editing software I quickly followed through with the idea, and the process was very easy. I simply opened the photo in the software program, and at the top of the Edit page, I clicked on the heading: “Image.” That opened a long list of options that included “Mirror.” I clicked on that word and there it was, a mirror image with the hawk turned in the opposite direction (facing left). That was easy enough, so next I placed the 2 images of the chocolate hawk on the screen facing one another. That was interesting, but almost immediately I realized I could take this process another simple step farther by turning the new mirror image into a negative.

I reacted quickly, returning to PaintShop Pro on my computer, where I selected the heading “Image” again, then simply clicked on the word “Negative” in the list, and the magic happened instantly. On the screen, the brown hawk with tan markings turned into a white hawk with surprisingly blue markings - and it was spectacular! At the same time, the white sky background behind the hawk changed to a dramatic black background; the photos were like night and day – literally.

I was so impressed with the new “white hawk at night” image that I promptly had an enlargement of it printed in the same size as the “brown hawk during day” photo. Of course, when I brought the enlargement into my office, I couldn’t resist laying the 2 images down on the floor to compare them side by side. And that’s when another little creative thought crossed my mind: Combine the photos face to face as a single mirror image – the yin and yang.

That would be great, but I soon faced a small dilemma: I couldn’t figure out how to merge the 2 images facing one another using that version of Paintshop Pro. In response I decided to do it old school style. I took a photograph of the 2 printed enlargements facing one another, and it looked so good that I returned to the photo studio to have another enlargement printed; and that created a unique image using the initial photo of the young chocolate Red-tail in flight combined with its negative mirrored image!

Paul wasn’t done yet; not until he combined the 2 photos – the ying and yang – into a unique image using an old school method. What do you think? This image is now enlarged and mounted in Paul’s home library. Try the process on a favorite photograph of yours.

While I’m guessing that some birders among our readership know how to combine 2 photos using Paintshop Pro, PhotoShop, or another photo editing program (I do now), but this mixed method was all I could come up with at the time, and it worked. You can’t see a seam between the photos and they melt together perfectly. It may have taken an extra step, and an extra trip to the photo studio, but it worked, and sometimes it’s more important to follow through with the creative process than it is about searching for the exact technical way of doing a given task.

Sometimes bird photography includes the creative process after you take the photo; and in this case, I could never have imagined how that negative image of the hawk would look – white with blue highlights against a black background – amazing! And especially when that negative image was coupled with the original photo, positioned face to face. How fun! So take a second look at some of your bird photos, squint hard, maybe drink a little wine (if you are old enough), and see if you can get your creative juices flowing in an unanticipated direction. Or just start trying a few new photo editing options hidden in the depths of your photo editing program – you never know what kind of artistic image you might come up with – and enjoy the process!

Article and Photographs by Paul Konrad

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