Fairest Vixen

[steve torna]

A beautiful and luxurious female red fox (Vulpes vulpes) posing; Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, US. Canon 5D III, 100-400mm IS Mark II, ISO 800, 1/800 second @ f/8, image size 3586 x 2415 pixels, February 2016.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Beautiful fox, that fur is so luxuriant, I also like the slightly unusual pose. She stands out beautifully from the background. Good detail in the snow.
I may be wrong but is the snow slightly dull/underexposed?

[keith mitchell]

Steve I take Jons point about the snow but the Fox itself looks so good with fine detail and softness of the fur ,also a nice pose and all set off by that dark bg ,excellent work.

Keith.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Steve -- The dark BG sets it apart and also that lovely colours of that beautiful fur makes this look very beautiful. I feel a hint more sharpness on the face might suit better but not a deal breaker .

TFS !

[Morkel Erasmus]

This really pops, nice pose and angle too.
I too feel the snow could be a tad brighter?
Did you add any blur to the background in processing?

[steve torna]

Hey Morkel, I only use LR and no I did not blur the BG, I did clone some hot spots out though. Any suggestions on how to whiten up the snow? Now that everyone mentioned it it does look slightly grey. thanks steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Steve - Beautiful low angle and I like the pose of the fox with the tail wrapped around. First thing I noticed too was that the whites look gray both in the snow and on the fox though to a lesser extent on the fox. Also the blacks on the fox are choked. It would probably be best to reprocess the RAW but here's a very quick attempt to bring up the whites using both levels and curves layers in PS but for me it is still too gray.

TFS,
Rachel

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hey Morkel, I only use LR and no I did not blur the BG, I did clone some hot spots out though. Any suggestions on how to whiten up the snow? Now that everyone mentioned it it does look slightly grey. thanks steve

Thanks for clarifying. I would just lift the highlights and whites sliders in RAW to make the snow appear whiter?

[Andre Pretorius]

Hi Steve

Stunning pose of this vixen!
Like Rachel's RP more with whiter snow, but the blacks are still a bit choked- difficult if not working from RAW.
Do you use TK?

[steve torna]

Thank you everyone, I really appreciate that you took the time and interest to comment; I went back to the Raw in LR (that is all I use) and reset the image. The snow in RAW is well "snow white" but because I wanted to darken the background and remove distracting highlights, I lowered blacks, highlights, and shadows which led to gray snow. This time, I actually raised highlights, shadows, and blacks. Now some of the highlights in background are prominent but overall, I think it better. Thanks again, I learned a lot from this one. steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Steve - If you work with masks then you should be able to apply the changes selectively so as not to affect the bg if you don't want to. The blacks on the paws definitely look better (I didn't make any changes to them in my rp btw, just noted they were choked). There's still some grey in the snow in the right corner but overall the snow looks better.

Rachel

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Steve,

Lots has been said above so little for me to add, my apologies for coming in so late as I have been away this Easter week-end.

Just wanted to say I absolutely love this capture, something dream-like and so beautiful about this fox, a very memorable image and both your RP as well as Rachel's work for me.

Thank you so much for this post, if you have you more from this sighting kindly share with us!

[Carl Walker]

Hi Steve. This really pops against that bg. Nice detail and softness makes this a great capture. I agree with lightening up the snow areas. Really good!!! WD