Hyenas at play

[hennieloots]

Hi Everybody

Image taken in Etosha near Namutoni. A clan of 9 Spotted Hyenas hijacked the waterhole for their own antics & fun. They played in the water – something I have never seen in real life, had tug-of-war with pieces of vegetation and seemed to enjoy keeping all the herbivores at bay. Their antics were very enjoyable to watch; here is 1 of the images taken.
I considered to exclude the shore line from the top, but did not work for me; does it distract, WDYT? All comments and critique and appreciated – as always!

Techs: Canon 1D-X | Canon EF200-400mm f4L IS USM w 1.4x engaged @ 560mm, 1/500s @ F/7.1 & ISO: 800 |EB: +0.66 EV| HH from SUV |
PostShutter:
DPP4 – Sharpen, Highlights, Contrast, Peripheral Illumination, Cropped all around for composition.
PS6 – Minor clean-up of debri on water in LLHC, Global Color Balance, Saturation, MTC with LM, Sharpened for Web in 2 passes.

Regards
Hennie

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Hennie, love these two and their reflection, good details and sharpness. the hyenas are just a touch dark on my Mac (not calibrated of course), thinking you may use Levels to brighten the mid tone a touch. Regarding the shore line, I would crop just above the 2 big rocks to lessen the impact. yes, it is a little bit distracting. Loi

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Love the image Hennie, Great angle and eye contact on both, the water adds so much to the image, must have been a lovely sighting to watch. I agree with Loi about the mid-tones.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Hennie - Nice view of the hyena and great to capture them in the water. Makes the image a bit unusual. Nice sharpness and detail. I do wish you had the entire reflection at the bottom. I am curious about your saturation settings or if you add any saturation. To me the image looks like it has too much saturation and you don't have an embedded color profile so when I bring it into PS, it is even more saturated. If it were mine I would reduce the saturation, particularly the reds and yellows on the hyenas and the cyans and blues overall. I would also darken the blues. Of course you were there and I wasn't but the hyena seem on the orange side to me.

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Canuel]

Hello Hennie,
A neat shot to see them in water. I like this as presented and wouldn't change anything. Regarding the crop, unless there's something distracting out of frame, I could see going wider to get more of the reflection. If the shoreline bothers you, I could see going to just below the lone rock up top. Personally, I think the two rocks provide a nice match to the two hyenas and cropping down to eliminate them makes it too tight for my taste.

[hennieloots]

Hi All

Thanks to all who looked and commented. I have prepared a repost with most of the suggestions applied as good I can. The closer crop is a bit tight for my liking - by taking from the top I had to take from the bottom as well for some balance.

Rachel & Loi- I looked back at my original TIFF master file and did the following changes:
Saturation layer - Reduced the Reds from 30 to 10, Yellow from 11 to 6, Blue & Cyan was not changed before, reduced to 20.
Tweaked my Global color balance curve adjustment.
Brightened the midtones via a LM selected for the midtones blended as "Screen" and adjusted the curve to bring back some contrast.

Regarding the embedded profile - I am at a loss here. I am following the steps as set out by Steve (think it was him) in a old "sticky". My steps - please tell me where I go wrong -
Save the master TIFF, duplicate TIFF to new image.
<Edit> - <Convert to profile...> - Source space is set to ProPhoto RBG - Destination Space set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1
<File > <Automate> <Fit Image> - 1200px
<Save for Web> - JPG settings to opt file size, etc, "sRGB" box is ticked, Metadata - "All" selected.

I would appreciate your opinion on the repost, I will also post a jpg of the RAW with no adjustments/sharpening/crop - That's why I cannot include the full reflection.

Thanks again to everyone for looking and commenting - that is why this site is so great!

Cheers
Hennie

[hennieloots]

Sorry for posting 2 images - hopefully the moderators forgive me - thought the RAW will help with the comments posted.
Hennie

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi Hennie. Lovely moment - I can only guess that this happened at Chudop waterhole?
I quite like the shoreline in the OP and would leave it in - all a matter of taste I suppose. Repost colours look better but I quite liked the bit of blue coming through in the water in the OP and would probably take artistic licence to bring/tease it out a bit more, something between the OP and RP colours.

Your steps sound correct. I always convert from ProPhoto to sRGB in PS first, and then also embed in the "save for web" action. I've found that if you only rely on the checked option in "Save for web" it can be hit and miss as sometimes the image still ends up not being sRGB - who knows why eh?

[Carl Walker]

Hi Hennie I think the shoreline is fine with me in the OP. Another option may be this one. I didn't do any cloning top lhs but perhaps adding another element of the oof clan member would add to some of the story. Did nothing else other than a WB check as seen here along with a little adj sat layer to work on the colours. Everything is to ones personal taste as we all say. These guys have such an amazing social structure and it is always a pleasure to observe them in the wild. TFS:S3:

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi again Hennie - for me your rp colors look more natural but maybe somewhere in between for the water would work too. I think Carl's still has too much cyan but as he said a lot of this is personal taste and how much one is willing to stray from what they saw. I much prefer the wider view of your op.

I hope you've got your color settings sorted but yes, a 2 step process "Convert to Profile" under Edit and also having the box checked in the save for web dialog.

Rachel