Southern Elephant Seal Pup

[Andreas Liedmann]

Photographed this cute looking pup, on South Georgia Island , while resting in the grass, and enjoying one of the rare moments to see the sun at that time.

Canon EOS 1D MK IV

EF 500 IS L ; Tripod

F8 ; ISO 320 ; 1/ 640sec

Image processed in RPP and PS; cropped to 80% of FF ; levels ,curves , selective color and contrast; LCE locally .

Thanks for watching and leaving a comment, good or bad.

Cheers Andreas

[Andrew Merwin]

Well this is certainly a unique POV. I like that the tongue is visible. The techs look good to my eye. I wish the grass blades were not in front of the lower eye. Have you considered removing them?

What is the white stuff in his/her nose?

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Andreas - I like this. It's something different. He looks like a big pup and it looks like he's smiling. I agree with Andrew about the grass across the lower eye not being ideal. This also looks just a bit oversharpened to me but I know you seem to like them sharper.

TFS,
Rachel

[Morkel Erasmus]

I like this Andreas. Great perspective and expression, sharpness and DOF.
That grass is unfortunate, but hey I deal with my fair share of grass too.
You can clone it if it fits your ethics...

[Andreas Liedmann]

Thanks Rachel,Andrew and Morkel all your comments appreciated.

Rachel - yep i like it sharp, think it is on the border but still more than acceptable.

Andrew - a lot of the young seals had this white stuff leaving their noses, do not exactly know what it is .

To all of you - agree on the kind of distracting grass blades , but in real life i could not cut it down, i have other shot with the head slightly up , but not with the same expression in the face and the vertical eyes. So cloning , but not for me now.

But still think it would look better without them.

Cheers Andreas

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Andreas, well for me i think this is one of your best. Techs look good, processed nicely and it has the big 'CUTE' factor.

I like the head angle and the cheeky tip of the tongue poking out, but with seal pups, it's those captivating eyes. Yes it's annoying about the grass blades, nothing you could have done in the field, but I think you should explore the avenue of cloning, although I think you might have tried?

Personally I might suggest a small amount of Luminosity over the body just to tone down marginally the slightly brighter parts and add some vibrance to the grass to give it some lift, finally just cropping bout a centimetre off the LH edge. removes that little white strip and gives a cleaner edge.

Just my take.

TFS
Steve

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Steve,
thanks for RP, works well what you did.
I had a version with more vibrance like yours , but backed off, maybe a little less would work better for me.

I thought there is nobody who can make an almost perfect :w3 image better, but here we go there is a man who can do ...............)))))-----))))

Really like your clone work, even on a low res file, well done Maestro.

Cheers Andreas

[Steve Kaluski]

Andreas, you can obviously do better on the high res, but I'm not sure if, as I said, you may have already tried on the eye?

Just use a small brush and work closely, do it as a new layer so that you are not working on the main layer, or duplicate, so if things go wrong you have, as I say to Rachel, a retreat option :w3 Also there are parts in the other eye you can also use in small areas.

Vibrance was applied only to the FG grass, I just though the colour needed some richness and it hits the spots unlike saturation IMHO. How I worked the Lumo mask is a little different, but I also ill also lighten some shadow areas too, but using a % brush so if you over do things it's not an issue.

Andreas, like everyone here, and you, we make contributions, based on thoughts and suggestions, nothing more, you as the 'owner' has the file say on how things progress. We can all learn from each other and this is why it's so important we ALL try to contribute to threads as someone might just pick up on something we all had missed, and we can learn.

Cheers
Steve