Standing Tall

[Loi Nguyen]

Reworked an image taken last year somewhere iN Africa in honor of the upcoming World Elephant Day. I will pray for his survival in the danger of poaching.

1DX
700mm
1/800
f8
ISO-400
HH
Mid day, overcast sky.
Almost FF, took a sliver off the top

Thank you for your comments.

Loi

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - I like the comp and the pose from the bigger tusker. Overall I felt the image was a bit flat and had a slight yellow cast. I took it into PS and in a HSL layer I globally reduced the yellows but also darkened the greens and added sat to them. Then I gave the ele a bit more punch in a curves adjustment layer. Finally, I dodged the highlights in the ele to give it a bit more tonal variation. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel


[Mark Needham]

What a huge tusker - magnificent ele! I agree with Rachel's suggestions and her RP looks good, although be careful blocking too much in the shadows, especially on the ele's legs which are a bit too dark in the RP. Also, any way to add more space to the left side (tail is very close to the edge) maybe using content aware / add canvas? And, if possible, straighten the horizon line (i.e., grass in the BG), or will that cause you to chop off the ele's tail when rotated? I would love to also see this worked up in a B&W :bg3:

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Rachel, i think you got the color cast correctly. I printed this image out and saw what i thought was a Green cast, but now you said it, I think it is Yellow. My hard drive crashed last November and I may have lost the RAW file, so I wouldn't be able to go back to the rAW file to redo the WB. The image was a bit flat because it was done under very soft light, I did increase the contrast. I think your RP may be too much contrast under such conditions.

Hi Mark, I agreed also that the image is a bit dark. I will rework it and repost later.

Thank you for your comments.

Loi

[BenBotha]

I thin something between the 2 posts could be better.
Ben

[Morkel Erasmus]

Lovely elephant indeed! Let's hope he's still roaming freely on the plains.
Rachel took care of the colour balance but I agree that her RP seems a bit choked up (traveling at the moment so viewing on the less-than-ideal laptop screen).
B&W could work too!

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi everyone, I'm happy to see that I actually have some space on the LHS, so gave it more space and rotated a little bit. Cropped for 4/5 ratio (wish I had shot this in landscape format), applied 6% Coling (80) filter to the entire image to take care of the Yellow cast, increased exposure a hair (+0.12EV), applied a little bit of Nik to the darkest part, and applied a little contrast to the elephant alone. It was mid day, over cast, so i didn't want to go for very high contrast. Hope you like it better.

Thank you for your comments.

Loi

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Loi , what a big guy, great specimen.
RP looks better than OP and Rachel`s RP , too heavy contrast :eek3: for me.
But your RP is looking a bit soft , forgot to sharpen ?

TFS Andreas

[Dumay de Boulle]

Fantastic specimen and I like your repost with more space. Maybe a little more contrast and a little darker like your OP...Nice one Loi!