Male Lion At Duba Plains

[Loi Nguyen]

Give B&W theme another try. Same male lion as previously posted, early morning, but the sun was already a bit intense.

1DX
500f4 II
1/1000
f8
ISO-1600
Handheld

Converted to B&W using Nik Silver Flex pro, small detailed extraction to the black mane and the BG (BG was too bright). Cropped slightly for comp left and top, no more room at the bottom.

Thank you for your comments.

Loi

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - really impressive and powerful looking male. He clearly is a king in his prime with very few battle scars. I like the conversion just felt that I wanted to bring back tame the highlights a little more in varying degrees so I applied a luminosity mask at varying opacities for the lion and bg to make him pop a little more from the bg. I also wanted to move him further off center just a bit so took some from the left. I do wish there was more space below but I'm betting you do too. Not sure what the line is across the bottom of the frame unless you accidentally didn't line up your crop with the bottom. Overall, really nice image.

TFS,
Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi rachel, love your treatment of the highlights. I understand how to make luminosity masks, but not clear how you used it here to tame the highlights. Could you explain? I'm not crazy about the crop in either my OP or your RP. Did try vertical, but felt the lion needs space since he was looking sideways, and I think I need more room at the bottom for an effective vertical crop. The line at the bottom appears during the b7W conversion, may be I need to take a sliver off. Thank you for your suggestions. Loi.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - That's the primary use of luminosity masks. I selected the brightest lights by hitting CTRL and the RGB Channel, then I created a layer mask of the selection, changed the blend mode to "Multiply" and adjusted the opacity. I further selectively adjusted the opacity of various parts of the image using the paint brush. Tony Kuyper has excellent tutorials on using luminosity masks.

Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Thank you Rachel. I have been using "Overlay" and of course it increases the highlights. Multiply tames it! I went back to the RAW file and reduced the exposure a little more, then re-started from there. Tried a different crop here. Hope you like it better. Loi

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Loi,
great pose of the nice looking Male .
But sadly the image is not grabbing me at all from the processing POV .
Too light overall , the shadows are too flat , looks like you used either S/H or the shadow recovery in ACR .Just grey tones dominating the image. Sorry for sounding so negative , just being honest.
For a 1Dx shot it looks very rough , if you wanted to have it that way, ok.
I feel the image has more potential as presented, just my 2 cents.

Sorry , Loi.
TFS Andreas

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi andres, i used Silver Flex pro Fine Art High Key to convert the image to B&W, just experimenting with it. Sad to hear you don't like it :(. This is my first attempts into the world of B&W, so appreciate your comments. here is a color version. Thank you. Loi

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Loi, no need to feel sad , just only because i said something negative about your first B/W tryout.
My idea would be do a straight B/W conversion at first , get the tones right from your POV . If you are happy post it,get critiques for it . From that point i would try to do other stuff.
If you ask me to make a RP , just send me the RAW or unprocessed HiRes jpg via DB , i will be happy to see what i can do with the image.
But do not forget we all see things different from time to time , so no right or wrong at times .

Cheers Andreas

[Loi Nguyen]

andreas, let me give it a try next week when I have more time. It is a good exercise after all and that is the purpose of the theme. Thanks. Loi

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Loi, nice to see this awesome guy again, one big beast!

For me the OP might have been better in a vertical format if you were planning a central POV, however as Rachel has illustrated, placing the subject to the left with space to the right seems to fit the composition better. If you have the time, it's worth swopping formats when shooting. Looking at the colour version it lacks tonal depth, just adding some shadow, dropping the exposure and a slight Curves adjustment I think bring back more range. In doing so you B/W will also be better as there is more tone to play with. Light gets harsh quickly here, and so the BKG reflects the time of day well. If you have the image content, based on the above I would move the whole crop down so you have more space at the foot.

Hope this helps.

TFS
Steve