During one of my January Yellowstone tours, we made a brief stop at Mammoth Hot Springs to indulge some of the first-time park visitors in my group. Though we are primarily searching for wildlife in the park, it offers up so much in the way of interesting landscapes in winter. And you never know when you’ll have a chance to combine the two elements to come away with something new.
Such was the case on this day. For the first time, I had Black-billed Magpies on the terraces. My primary goal was to try and capture them flying in front of the most colorful part of the terraces. A couple shots turned out, sort of so-so. But I happened to follow this bird as it landed on a steamy ledge where the sun was shining through behind. I figured it might have some potential as a higher density monochrome conversion, and ultimately there was enough contrast and tonal variation in the scene to make it work.
As always, I do a bit more processing work in black and white—higher contrasts, a little dodging and burning at times—than I would in color. Working in monochrome gives me a bit more freedom to push boundaries that I still don’t feel comfortable pushing in color work. I will probably revisit this at some point before I publish the final gallery of images from this trip, and I may reduce the structure and grain a bit, but I like where the contrast is at, at least.
Canon R5
Canon 100-500mm
ISO 800
1/2500th
f/7.1
Max