Light: Speckling of starlings

I was in Richmond, VA, recently. It was beautiful weather. One evening I was standing on the terrace of my hotel room and noticed starlings schooling in the distance (I guess you’d call it schooling.). It was one of those situations where the eye sees something, but the camera can’t quite capture it: In all the photos, you could barely see the swallows against the sky.

I do like to play in Lightroom, though. I’ll take a photo and see what I can do with it to make it more interesting. In this case, I took a blah, color photo, made it black and white and high, high contrast. I ended up with this image, the speckling of the starlings against a, now, white sky. I love those lights in the foreground, too. They really stand out, reminiscent of bird beaks.

High-contrast black and white yields a stark image, something you might think was drawn, at first glance. In this case, it accentuates the starlings and the features of the landscape and foreground building, creating something very eye-catching, I think.

Edited Oct 4, 2018: Changed the title. They’re starlings, not swallows. : )