Family Outing

[Ashleigh Scully]

Hi -

THis is a family of River Otters we found at Oxbow Bend on the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park, WY.

There were 5 pups and the mother. In this shot, she was trying to lead them back across the river and she stopped to look at us. We moved out of her way so she could continue home. The fifth pup is behind her. I have one other shot with all 6 of them but the background snow is all chopped up and covered with mess from them eating fish. This one looked cleaner.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4x III

ISO 250
f/9
1/1250s

Gitzo tripod used.

I adjusted shadows a tiny bit on the original RAW to bring out more detail in the mother's fur then did a global USM. I am wondering if there is anything else that someone would recommend with a dark subject on a snowy background.

Thanks so much and I'll post a February theme image tomorrow !

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Ashleigh, nice family portrait. You were lucky to see them. On my monitor the snow looks grey, so I think you under-exposed the snow. Did you shoot in Manual or AV mode? I find the best way to expose a snow scene is Manual. pushing the exposure to the right until you had data in the right most fifth box without blinkies. The rest usually take care of itself. You should have shot at much higher iSO for this scene, may be ISO-800 would be my guess to get data in your fifth box on this scene. TFS. Loi

[Morkel Erasmus]

This is a cool scene Ashleigh! I like the comp/framing and quirky poses you captured.
It does seem a bit soft - especially given your aperture setting...is it a large crop? Can't be heat haze (snowy day)...

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Ashleigh - It's great that you were able to get such a large family grouping and also get a shot with a few of them looking toward camera. I agree with Loi that the snow looks a little grey. Here's a rp where I opened up the midtones a bit more with a levels adjustment to bring out a bit more detail on the otters, dropped the blacks in the whites in selective color to improve the snow color (there are many ways to do this and it would be better at the RAW level) and applied another round of selective sharpening to the otters.
This is just to give you an idea of the direction I would take it.

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ashleigh, what was the EV set to, you can find this within the Exif data.

In snow conditions the metering system is easily fooled, therefore as always your Histogram is your best friend. Metering off the snow very close to the subject is a good way, however you will probably find that +1 will perhaps be a good starting point and adjust accordingly. Remember, it's easier to darken an image than to lighten it for obvious reasons.

I still like the image having seen it a while back, Rachel's RP is going in the right direction.

TFS
Steve

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Ashleigh, Rachel's RP improved this image a great deal. Certainly worth your effort to rework the RAW file. Loi

[Jamie Douglas]

Hi Ashleigh, you were lucky to catch this family as I know Otters rarely stay still long enough to photograph for any length of time. Nice work :5.

As Steve mentioned +1 is a good place to start when photographing in the snow because you want to extract as much detail from the shadow areas as possible and any bright areas (unless the sun is strong of course) can be dealt with in post production.

Rachel's repost has improved the sharpening and I think you could get a little more detail around the eye area of the otter 2nd from left.

Jamie

[keith mitchell]

Hi Ashleigh, a cool shot in more ways than one,love the snow on the heads of this nice family group.

Keith.:S3:

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Ashleigh,

great image, I like it very much with the youngsters. Rachel brought it already in the right direction for you. Very nice :bg3:

Have a great week

Ciao
Anette

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Ashleigh,
lovely Otter image of this family.Nice clean shot even better with Rachel`s tonal tweaks , but sharpening a tad too much, saying that by knowing Rachel used the low res file .
Very nice

TFS Andreas

[gail bisson]

Hi Ashleigh,
You have received some great advice. I especially agree about the metering off the snow at +1.
I really like this image. I love the fact that they are all looking at you and rachel's repost has made the image shine. Well done,
Gail

[Ashleigh Scully]

Hi -

Here is Ashleigh's repost which we reviewed last night. She did an adjustment in the RAW converter to the whites so the snow should be brighter now. Looking at her Histogram, she definitely did account for the snow, but could have pushed it further to the right - thank you all for that advice.

She selectively sharpened the otters again, too. One thing which we will both need to do some homework on is getting more detail via mid tones - Rachel's version definitely had more fur detail than this repost. She'll keep working at it!

She has many, many photos of this otter family, its hard to choose which one to post. I think with all of them, to Morkel's point, there is a softness there. Despite being on a tripod, it was difficult to get the sharpness she wanted - the whole family would not sit still for one second - they were like a pile of writhing snakes - fun to watch! There is also a sixth otter behind the group which seemed to be the most uncooperative, always nosing and poking the others around.

Thank you again for your input.

Gerry