Which photo works best?

[Frankie]

All suggestions welcomed!
Thank you!
frankie

Original with very little post processing other than some cropping


Black and white - cropping and some adjustments in contrast

[stevewe88]

The B&W works best for me.

I am not sure how you converted it but the grass has ended up quite dark. It would be worth playing around with the yellows and greens to see if you could get this lighter and make the subject stand out more.

[MiniChris]

Part of the problem with the photo was a lack of sharpness, especially near the bird's head and upper wing on the leading edge. This tended to blend in with the background and thus causing a "muddied" look.

I used Silver Efex Pro, leaving it neutral and adding a bit of contrast, coupled it with a green filter, raised the structure a bit, added about 7% silver saturation and a bit of sepia toning. The green filter pushed up the blacks and dark grays and took anything green in the photo and shifted it way toward the tonal light side. The filter in itself pushed the bird off the background.

Lastly, I did an adjustment layer and dodged the darker areas on the head, beefing up the area around its eye, then gave all of it a sharpen of 85%, 1, 4. Ten minutes.

[Frankie]

Thank you Steve and Chris. This is exactly the kind of comments I was looking for. I'm just starting to play with black and white and realizing there is a lot I need to learn!

Chris - this looks awesome and I'm going to have to see if I can recreate it. Thank you for taking the time to show me!
Thanks again!
frankie