Red deer stag

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hand held Canon 1DX Canon 100-400L IS II &1.4TC III Auto ISO 5000 1/1250 sec f8
Here is the same stage as previously posted, this time he is bellowing. I have corrected the slight colour cast and used luminosity masks to adjust the shadows and highlights, plus a little clarity to the mid tones, also a slight crop.
All C&C welcome.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Jon -- This looks even better than the previous image of his . Lovely composition and light , the colors do look fine here but a hint of magenta in the wet fur . I see a bit more scope for sharpening of its face as well .
TFS !

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Jon - Great bellowing pose. Again I would prefer just a bit more room below. This image is a bit warmer and redder than your other post of the stag. You were there so will know better which color temp accurately reflects the scene but the reds in the shadows look a bit strong to me. If it were mine I would also tame the highlights a fair amount. I'm not seeing magenta in the fur but a little coming through in the bg. Here's a rp with the highlights tamed, the reds dropped a bit and the color balance of the shadows adjusted toward cyan slightly. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks Haseeb and Rachel. Rachel yes I prefer yours, I still have a way to go yet in getting colour balance / temps / casts corrected. I was using the RGB components in Levels and checking in shadows mid tones and highlights for differences in RGB values, but even when those have been corrected I think you have to ask yourself "does that look right?" The original raw file had quite a blue cast.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Jon if you like send me the raw and i just send it through DPP and i give you info on the settings i would use .

[Jonathan Ashton]

Images should be there shortly!!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Jon just one processed , do not forget colors are subjective :wave:

Basically what i did was a double process due to the high contrast

Color temp 5000 K
Fine tuning color B / A -1,5
Pict style : fine detail
HL : -2
sharpness : 2

Luminance NR 0
Chrominance NR 10

color : yellows -1

then two exposures blended together in PS ; one contrast layer locally applied to parts of the stag ; a bit further burning the HL in the stag with curves and blend mode ( color burn ) ; and exposure adjustment layer set the gamma to 0,85 at 80 % opacity .
Downsized ; sharpened for web

WDYT ?

BTW a nice rack caught in a great bellowing pose and nice but difficult to handle setting !!

Keep trying with this tricky ( not for me though) DPP 4 .

Cheers Andreas

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Jon, you caught a lovely pose here and the RP by Rachel and Andreas look great.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hi Jon just one processed , do not forget colors are subjective :wave:

Basically what i did was a double process due to the high contrast

Color temp 5000 K
Fine tuning color B / A -1,5
Pict style : fine detail
HL : -2
sharpness : 2

Luminance NR 0
Chrominance NR 10

color : yellows -1

then two exposures blended together in PS ; one contrast layer locally applied to parts of the stag ; a bit further burning the HL in the stag with curves and blend mode ( color burn ) ; and exposure adjustment layer set the gamma to 0,85 at 80 % opacity .
Downsized ; sharpened for web

WDYT ?

BTW a nice rack caught in a great bellowing pose and nice but difficult to handle setting !!

Keep trying with this tricky ( not for me though) DPP 4 .

Cheers Andreas
Love it!! Now lets see what I can do - WDYT??..... Progress???

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hey Jon not that bad !!!! if you think this comes close what you have seen in real life .I actually think yours do look a bit better in terms of image tones and detail , mine does look a bit overboard .
As always a matter of taste .

But here is another version , where i tried to avoid double processing and i opened up the shadows a fraction , so this is a single DPP conversion with some more tweaks in DPP with the tones and a number of adjustment layers all masked with TK masks for local targets .

WDYT ?

Cheers Andreas

[Marc Mol]

Regardless of the subjective colour cast issue, this is very nice indeed Jon, the pose and beautiful lighting are well portrayed :cheers:

Would just like a tad more lower room for mine.

TFS

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks Marc. Andreas I think all the reposts are pretty good, your last one with just a little more light in the darker shadows looks about right to me.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Jonathan!

A wonderful capture and some stunning RP's from you, Rachel and Andreas!

Perhaps a tad "over the top" in terms of colours, but I just love Andreas's first RP because the richness suits the scene tremendously.

Beautiful pose from the subject and I love the environment.

Nice techs too:)
Thank you so much for sharing, I hope to see more from you here in Wildlife:cheers:

Kind regards,

[Morkel Erasmus]

Great setting here Jon!
That last repost knocks it out of the park for me :cheers:
Bushy or Richmond?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks very much everyone for your comments suggestions and reposts. The image was taken in Tatton Park - nearest large city is Manchester.