Evening Elk

[Ashleigh Scully]

I photographed these Elk one early night in July in Wyoming. I purposely tried to adjust my settings so I only captured the silhouettes. If I had gone higher on my ISO I would've gotten some detail in the elk and that's not what I wanted.

I'm wondering if you think this photo works like this, or is it too dark? This is a full-frame shot and I only did a small change to the Highlights to brighten the sky just a little bit.


Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM


ISO 500 | f/2.8 | 1/250s


Gitzo3542XLS Tripod

Thanks for looking, Ashleigh

[Dave Spates]

This is a hard one, as far as the settings you want for the silhouette I have no clue, but I like the composition of the image, just thinking it would work better if the sun was just going down or just a little past sunset.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

I think you've done well here. Nothing I would have wanted differently (except perhaps a moon in the background, but that was not within you control! :w3).

[Doug West]

I'm with Tobie. I think this is fantastic. The elk are well defined. Not sure
on cropping...maybe...a little off the bottom.

Doug

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Ashleigh - very well seen and captured. It's unusual to have a silhouette against a dark bg but it works. If it were mine I would bring out a little more detail/definition in the grasses at the bottom to give the elk a bit of separation from the grasses. In an ideal world, you would want separation between the elk as well so that their racks were not intersecting but that's a minor point and a near impossibility to actually achieve. Keep experimenting, it's working!

TFS,
Rachel

[Douglas Bolt]

The entire image is so dark that I originally thought it was unexposed. I understand that you want it dark, but... well maybe... but it is still not working for me. Here's what one-click on Curves-Auto looks like.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Ashleigh,
i agree with Dave that this is a hard one…..
Comp is working nice , but the tonality is not my cup , sadly.For a silhouette it is not dark enough in the FG and not bright enough in the sky, just my thoughts.

TFS Andreas

[Jonathan Ashton]

Ashleigh a good idea but it is not quite a silhouette, I would personally make it darker or lighter and decide which I prefer. If you do make it darker I think Rachel had a good idea regarding the grasses.
An easy way would be to make two raw conversions and then layer them in Photoshop and brush away to give the desired effect. (My apologies if you already know this!)

[Rachel Hollander]

Ashleigh - here's a rp very quickly giving you an idea of what I was suggesting. I did this with a simple levels layer adjustment, moving the middle slider to the left to 1.05, and masking everything except the grasses. You could go even further depending on your taste.

Rachel

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice outline and mood, Ashleigh. For me, sadly, it's just too dark, but probably only by 1/3 or 2/3 stop overall.
Douglas gave you a good pointer although I think he pushed it too far, I'd go about halfway there if the file quality/noise allows?
In an ideal world there'd also be no merging of antlers :w3

[Ashleigh Scully]

Thank you everyone for the comments and the reposts, I really appreciate it!

I thought it was too dark but I've gotten good feedback on it from other people and thought I would try it here.

Rachel thank you for your repost its closest to what I was trying for.

Thanks again everyone.

[Douglas Bolt]

Morkel,

I didn't intend to make a final image, but just to take an already nice image in another direction using the power of Curves-Auto. I agree that the RP is a bit too bright, but that can be adjusted to taste by reducing opacity on the curves layer.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ashleigh, well I'm going against the flow, I like the OP as it's more about a sense of 'feeling' or 'atmosphere', rather than detail and definition. For me, it about letting the view join up the dots on this, let them interpret there own thoughts with the limited info presented, similar to having an image backlit, rarely do you get truck loads of detail.

Personally I like the OP, but if you were to revisit the image, then somewhere between the OP & Rachels. Occasionally it's good to present something that maybe is 'away' from how it was shot, isn't that the beauty of digital photography, it gives us the option/flexibility to try/venture into other options?

TFS
Steve

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Hi Ashleigh, well I'm going against the flow, I like the OP <snip> ... if you were to revisit the image, then somewhere between the OP & Rachels. Steve

I agree 100%! :5