Let Them Be...

[Gabriela Plesea]

Dear Friends,

Life is tough for the rhino in South Africa these days and I am sure you all know their numbers are dwindling due to poaching. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have such a sighting. On this particular afternoon myself and my partner Andre found ourselves in the company of nine (yes, nine) rhino, so lots of images in this folder - this is but one frame I thought you might like to view.

I shared with Andreas my first edited version of this image and he made some suggestions I was happy to implement. I look forward to your comments and critique, be it of a technical nature or otherwise.

Nikon D4
Nikon 500mm F4
ISO 4000
F6.3
1/1250

Kind regards,

[keith mitchell]

You can forget the technical bit from me Gabreila but from a natural history point of view its great, lovely interaction between these two magnificent mud covered animals, pleasure to view.

Keith.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Gabriela - Looks like they just had a nice wallow in the mud. Great low pov and comp works for me. I like the sense of movement that the image conveys as well. Looking forward to more images of this sighting from both you and Andre (hint, hint).

TFS,
Rachel

[BenBotha]

The techs are spot on. I like the yellowish skin colour on the face and grass. Their plight is sad, I was in a game reserve this weekend, we could not inform the others of the Rhino we saw-the poachers are monitoring the radios!! TFS
Ben

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gabriela , like the head on (half way) trotting pose of the two .
Good comp and well dosed DOF ,does look good to me now from the tonal POV , but i might try to go even a bit more in the HL to mid tone range , but use a lumo mask and two layers to avoid an overall effect . And use low opacity .
You extracted nice details with this one.

Another little thing is that you could try to avoid sharpening in the spectacular HL as it is a bit conflicting with the HL , but this is really nit picking :bg3:, but i know i can do that with you :t3!

Very well captured and processed Gabriela .:wave:

TFS the nitty picky Andreas

[Gabriela Plesea]

Thank you Keith, Rachel, Ben and my Nitty-Picky Bro:bg3:

Dearest Rachel - hint taken, LOL. More to come, I set the lions aside for now... Thought I should honour our beautiful rhino and raise more awareness, their situation is indeed desperate. But real good efforts were made locally to raise money and to continue the fight against poaching, a number of successes lately where the criminals were apprehended. We are so proud of those wonderful, dedicated people who risk their lives to protect our wildlife. Myself and Andre would like to print on canvas some of our images to be auctioned at a special event soon - every little bit counts. I count on your help to make the best of those images, so please go ahead and nit-pick as much as you can. Should you wish to donate an image kindly let me know - myself and Andre will have it printed, exhibited and auctioned on your behalf at the next fundraiser in about a month' time. For more details, please send me a PM or drop me an email, will give you more information which I cannot disclose here for obvious reasons.

Andreas, I see what you mean. Will revisit, I think I might forgotten to lower opacity. I will look at the sharpening as well, thank you so much:w3

Kind regards, thank you all again for your feedback,

[Andreas Liedmann]

Gabriela commenting regarding sharpening as you use the latest gear from the yellow brand :w3, i guess you can go lower as the file is stunning i think without having seen the raw .
How did the extreme HL look in the original , think they have been slightly clipped , but i could be well wrong .

Cheers the nitty picky Bro :c3:

[Gabriela Plesea]

Andreas, I can fix the sharpening easily, thanks for pointing that out. I normally sharpen a bit in LR and then again for web. I went back and checked - I went too far in LR with the sharpening, this is where the problem comes from. Will have to start afresh but no big deal, I enjoy doing PP work.

Just looked at the RAW as well, no clipping whatsoever (the-heee, I was watching the histogram). The raw is indeed stunning, it is the "operator" behind the computer who is at fault, LOL. Busy working on another image taken just seconds apart, then I will revisit this one and show you the changes.

Forgot to tell you, got a D4S from Nikon to play with, hopefully good weather this week-end:bg3:

[Andreas Liedmann]

Gabriela if you convert the downsized tif to LAB and sharpen the lightness channel only!!!, then you will have less washed out looking HL !!!!!! compared to RGB .
You can convert back and forth between LAB/RGB without any visible and measurable color shift !!!! So if you have critical HL like in this case , give it a shot , just make two copies and sharpen one within RGB and the other one within LAB . Finally take a look side by side in PS , it is subtle but there is a difference .

Hoping for the best weather for you and the yellow camera :wave:.

[Gabriela Plesea]

I did convert to LAB but sharpened both channels, 35% lights and 20% darks. Let me see what I can do, thanks Buddie, appreciate it:5

[Andreas Liedmann]

Will send you demo video how to make this work with the LAB sharpening , but please be patient with me , might not be today.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Cool, thank you Andreas:5

[Morkel Erasmus]

Fabulous moment, DOF and framing here Gabriela.
Would perhaps only look at sharpening as mentioned and add a hint of midtone contrast?
Their plight is sad. These images may soon be worth lots of money :(

[Gabriela Plesea]

Thank you Morkel, will do:w3 I am starting afresh with this one, over sharpened in LR and way too many Jpg versions:) I would like to have a final version that is good to print, never had any of my images printed on canvas and this is quite exciting:tinysmile_shy_t:

Have a super evening,

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Gabriela, I like the framing and the 'lowish' POV as it gives the appearance of being at their own eye level, which always ticks my box. I really like the mud face pace and where bits are still wet or dry, and that caked on look. From the techs I think you can understand what I've been saying and hopefully has boosted your thoughts about pushing things, but knowing the files now of the D4 & S there may be a bit more you could extract. A bit more DoF I think would have been better i.e. f9, focus seems to be on the calf, but you were balancing things, plus if you had some more image content below this would be nice, only a sliver more as I think what you have is about the minimum. i think you could selectively reduce the green a bit that runs behind their legs???

Personally I feel the subjects need a bit more 'guts' in terms of tonal contrast, to provide a bit of weight & depth. it's easy to say mid tone, but you have to think that it's not that straight forward if done correctly and with additional Blend mode changes things take on a whole new look. The right ear of the mother seems to look soft and muted, but appears to be on the same 'plane of focus', (not focal plane) as the calf, yes being picky, but you did ask :w3.

BTW you may need to think how you process the image for canvas compared to print/web because of the nature of the material???

TFS
Steve

[Gabriela Plesea]

Dear Steve,

I am so grateful for your feedback - the pickier you get the better for me, I really want to make the most of a few rhino images:bg3:

I cannot change DOF unfortunately, perhaps I can go through the folder and look at the whole "sequence", there might be a decent frame taken seconds earlier where the rhinos are a bit further. I just liked the closeness here.

I think F6.3 was probably the right choice when they were lying in the mud, I should have gone up on both ISO and F-stop as they started running towards us but I had no time. I had just changed from the 300 lens to the 500 when they suddenly got up and started trotting, wished I kept the 300 but stuck to what I had, afraid not to miss out. Focus was on the mother, I just checked. Later I moved it on the little one as he went ahead of her.

So let me try give those two some more "guts" - I might pick another frame from this sequence, you just gave me some ideas when you mentioned that ear looking kind of odd:) Been thinking about the printing - we have no experience with canvas so we'll have to give those images to someone who knows what he is doing. I would be forever in your debt if you could give me some direction / advice regarding processing for canvas, I would so love those textures, the detail to come through, I want the rhino to step out of the canvas and the viewers to walk on mud falling off their hide:)

Thank you so much Steve, kindly allow me to email you a few RAW files and some questions, if that's ok. This is very exciting and I cannot wait to get to work:5

Warmest regards,

[Steve Kaluski]

Perhaps you need to think about a 200-400 lens to offer flexibility when subjects move towards you quickly, but then both you and the lens have to work harder and so does your SS & DoF.

Will look forward to a RP and hopefully to gain more 'guts' within the image. Time will be ticking, as I'm off Friday to sunnier, warmer climates, so no pressure, LOL, but I really do have a truck load to do and I will try to help.

Never printed on Canvas, although Dumay has, so he may offer some good, sound advice i'm sure, all my experience is in 'Soft proofing' and printing conventional with the correct Printer profiles etc for the output.

cheers
Steve

[Gabriela Plesea]

Steve, I often wish I did not buy the 200 lens, I might sell it and consider the 200-400 at some stage. I just seem to get less joy out of the 200 - just not my thing, I seem to be permanently glued to the 500:2eyes2:
Will send you some images to look at, I have plenty of time as the next fund-raiser is scheduled for early July so maybe when you are back you might find some time to have a chat:)

Warmest regards,

[Steve Kaluski]

Gabriela, I think it's hard to quickly change from a zoom to a fixed lens whilst shooting, perhaps Andreas may also have encounter issues as you have to work differently and the kit works harder. The great advantage with the Canon, albeit heavier is the built in extender which is far better than the conventional one and allows you instance access. I've got a thought you could try, will drop you a line.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Gabriela - too late to drop in but really a beautiful image here , you done exceptionally well in capturing this image , only the greenish cast in some areas of the image especially where the mud is involved can easily be corrected but thn it is a matter of choice . Importantly i got to learn some basics from this post and i am really very thankful to you and everyone who have commented on this post !

[Gabriela Plesea]

Thank you so much Haseeb,

The mud on the rhino might appear to have a green cast but we are experiencing draught for some months now, very little water and the wallows are rather shallow and full of green algae, this is where the green tinge comes from.

Glad you find this useful, I am grateful for your comments and time to view, so looking forward to your participation in the future and I cannot wait to see your next post, keep them coming:5

Kind regards,