_{I am a huge proponent of walking. Walking as a means of transportation, as a facilitator for contemplation or just a remedy for the back-pain from the hours spent in front of a screen. Taking a walk will always reward you in some way. Take a walk with curious eyes and you might even discover nice little surprises, things of beauty or character, that just linger there, above you, where most people will not look, waiting to be discovered.}

Today I want to show you a wonderful scene that I stumbled upon during a brief urban expedition. I was on my way back home after taking care of a promise to a good old friend who was in need of a pair of new eyes.

My googly mission was already accomplished and so I felt at ease to let my own eyes wander up along the facades of the industrial buildings across the road where they stumbled upon a flock of pigeons that had distributed themselves evenly along the edge of the wall.

I managed to capture a few decent shots of these rock-doves sitting around. Then, one of them suddenly took off, I was quite lucky and my shutter triggered right at the perfect moment, showing the bird's wings spreading in the most iconic and graceful manner.

The symmetry of the original image wasn't quite as perfect as I would have wanted it, so I had to clone some of the birds from another exposure and fix the brickwork ever so slighty.

I usually shy away from b/w photography, I do not know what it is exactly, but I feel like something goes missing with most of the pictures when I try them as black and whites. But after a little color correction, this image was calling to be desaturated.

I initially went with a 200% response on the blue channel turning the sky into an overexposed white background, but that completely destroyed its dramatic appeal. I toned down the blues a lot and gave some more exposure on the red channel back... yeap... I was happy with that!

For a brief moment I felt the image was a bit too much on the gloomy side now. I flipped everything horizontally which did succeed in giving it a bit more of a positive attitude. But then I quickly decided it would be better to stick to the original mood.

I also played around with inserting some more flying birds from the different shots I had captured and changing the framing a bit... but ultimately I settled for the original symmetrical framing and just the single pigeon taking off towards the left.

And if you liked the image, you can download an un-cropped full-resolution, a retina 16:9 (2560*1440) or the fullHD (1920*1080) version and use it, for example as a wallpaper. If you intend to re-publish it, please do let me know first.