Elephant Portrait

[Rachel Hollander]

I seem to be posting portraits lately. Here's another one and I know it won't suit everyone's taste. I wanted a head on view of an elephant and pushed the conversion and contrast here a bit to get a sort of old time feeling. I also cropped this from a landscape orientation. Taken in the Timbavati Game Reserve, South Africa.

Canon 5D3
70-200 II @ 200mm
1/125
f4.5
ISO 400
EC +.67
HH from safari vehicle, cropped, levels, curves, selective dodging and burning, converted and sharpened in CS6.

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Rachel, well I don't think it's really working for me, it's all a bit busy.

The separation between subject & BKG isn't there and so all the elements seem to be either fighting or rather distracting. Have you softened the BKG with a blur, although I assume you just masked the elephant to keep only the contrast to the main subject? Perhaps if you are exploring this route, then my be NIK might have the answers, as per what a lot of people did last year, but you have to work with the image otherwise it's just an application, plus like so many, I feel the subject needs to be right for conversion and I'm not sure this is, however I trust others will add their thoughts too. Just watch your techs & SS, not wholly convinced their are right, prefer more DOF & SS, especially with the 5D :S3:

TFS
Steve

[Morkel Erasmus]

I like the tones and contrast you achieved in the head itself, Rachel, but agree with Steve as a whole it's not tying together well for me. The tightness on the edges at the ears, the separation from BG...
Could it stand an even tighter crop to get a narrow portrait of just trunk and face??

[Morkel Erasmus]

Looking again...I really do love the tones, contrast and detail on the elephant. :5
Here's the crop I was musing about?

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Rachel, the crop from Morkel looks much better. I have a bit a prob with the whites on the forehead of the elephant. I might would take that down a bit, but overall I like it very much, wehn cropped. Without the crop it is for me a bit busy overall.

Ciao
Anette

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Rachel,
good suggestions above from the others,
if so i would go for tighter crop.
Nice tones in the subject , but i would darken the lighter parts a fraction , too heavy for my taste.

TFS Andreas

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks everyone, I'll play with it a bit.