New Years Boy

[Andre Pretorius]

Captured this magnificent youngster this morning.
Followed him and Mom through the thicket as they were approaching a dirt road. Raced ahead and waited for them to cross.
Image taken under cloudy conditions with intermediate sunlight- Auto ISO
They must have been wading trough mud some time before- the darker legs.

Struggled a bit with tones, blues and greens- RAW was captured in Neutral- very flat.

WDYT?

Nikon D3s with 300f2,8
1/1600 @ f6.3
ISO 1600
+1/3 EV

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Andre - Always great to see a rhino in the open and with its head up a bit. I like the mouth full of grass, walking pose and pov. I think you can bring out a bit more detail. I did a quick rp dropping the yellows, a lumo mask on the HLs and then boosted the midtones on the back of the rhino slightly. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel

[Andre Pretorius]

Hi Rachel

The blues were too much in OP, wasn't happy with result with Sat layer, added bit of yellows to reduce blue "cast", maybe a tad too much?
Your RP does look much better with the MT contrast!

Just an interesting question- I always use Camera Neutral colour profile on the Nikon. Should one play with the Primaries in Camera Profile to remove a cast? Do you first get Grey point? Why is Camera Profile last in the LR palette, if it is so important?
Sorry for all the questions, trying to understand how to wang the sliders...

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Andre - I use either Faithful or Neutral depending on which I think gets me closer to the scene as I remember it. That's my first step. Second step is adjusting WB with the eye dropper. Other than in adjusting WB and Tint in ACR, I personally don't deal with color casts until later in PS usually with a HSL layer adjustment or a selective color adjustment. While I understand the color balance issue, I tend to eliminate casts by reducing the color rather than adding another. Dealing with any color casts if necessary is usually one of my last steps because I have found that other adjustments such as lumo masks or curves can augment or affect the color cast so I find it best to adjust near the end. I'm not a fan of the LR interface so don't use it but I doubt there is any significance to where it is placed in the palette other than grouping like adjustments together.

Hope this helps.

Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Andre, I like the raised front leg, grass in the mouth and HA, as he signals your presence, but he knows you are no threat. I might have gone a bit more on SS say 1/2500 and if possible say f/8.

Not sure if this helps, but I feel the OP was too yellow so went cooler and tweezed out a bit more depth. Any colour issues should be dealt with in the RAW conversion, that is where you have maximum control and both LR & ACR use the same engine, but if you need to then for finer tweaks you can address once exported as a Tiff, but you should really do the majority beforehand. I also did a small rotation too.

TFS
Steve

[haseeb badar]

Hi Andre -- I like Steve's RP the best . Great pose of this mighty creature . TFS !

[Mike Poole]

Nice walking pose and the head up is nice to see.

Always difficult to comment on colours and details of animals you don't know, so I can't comment on any accuracies, but purely as a photograph I prefer the RP's with Rachels version showing nice tones, and Steve's showing more detail. If it were mine I'd be tempted to go back to the RAW knowing what extra there is within the file, as I do like the timing of the shot.

Mike

[Andre Pretorius]

Thank you all for commenting an suggestions.

Spent the evening redoing from Raw in LR.
Did not work- deleted everything.
Maybe tried to hard- did too much to try and get more MT contrast..
Will try next time...

[D. Robert Franz]

Fine image and the re-posts look good. Lots of great PP instruction here!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Andre happy new year ..... oops i am very late with both , the image and the greetings .
This big boy gave you a nice moving side pose :5.
Nicely framed and you have some good detail showing up .
I agree the OP is a bit too yellow and somewhat flat overall . I think Steve has done a relatively nice job of covering the issues , but might have overboard for my taste , if his version would be the final PS layer i might lower the opacity to 66 % :c3: and it will work perfect :w3.

Cheerio Buthi hope you post more