Pokey

[Brian Sump]

194088

During our trip to Santa Clara Ranch in S Padre, Texas, this pokey fella (Armadillo) came in to play at the watering hole. He actually quite startled us as he entered from our right at pretty close to min focal distance.

He dug and splashed around for a bit, making for a fun shoot. See if you can see a tiny guest hitching a ride somewhere.... :-p

R5
600mm
Tripod
ISO 4000
1/1600
f5

LR and PS, Topaz for noise. Cropped to vertical and cloned one small white spot in FG.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Ant on his snout! I like the crop shape and composition, sharp and good details, I would be tempted to enhance the scale like skin using Clarity and possibly a fraction of Dehaze being careful not to make too dark.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Heyho Amigo ... good to see you pointed your lens at something different !!!
Welcome to the different side ....LOL .

Very cool to see a different subject , nice and tight portrait . Well captured and processed .... including the " Alien Ant Farm " .
Processing looks for sure basically good , perfect DOF and a ooooh so smooth BG .... a real Sump :5

If this was mine I would give the subject more tonal depth and variations in the tones . But I would definitely choose different edits than the ones that Jon suggested .... more delicately within PS , blend modes and lumo masks will do a BETTER JOB , IMHO.
But your call ... a wonderful image !!!

TFS Andreas

[Gabriela Plesea]

Wow, never seen this species here, how wonderful, thank you so much for sharing!
Looks good to me, well composed and exposed, superb BG, love the pose. As well as the tiny ant:tinysmile_shy_t:

IQ looks great and image is well processed, lovely detail - you should be so pleased with this frame!
Do agree with Andreas on tonal depth, you could extract more from this if you want to. It is a real stunner IMO and I enjoyed viewing, tremendously. Once again thank you :cheers:

Kind regards,

[Brian Sump]

Super thankful for all the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it overall. Gabriela, this was a first for me seeing them in person - they do not usually venture up as far north as Denver, Colorado area.

Where would you all add the tonal depth? I think the scales on the face are actually pretty accurate.

Did do a mids adjustment with lum masks at a pretty good amount early on in the processing flow. If you look at that darker scale on the shoulder, a little below the eye and the ones to the left of that, they are pretty rich and represent the actual tones in that range well IMO.

Definitely open to further thoughts/perspectives on this one though :-)

[Brian Sump]

Oh, and Andreas - I shoot my lens at all sorts of places but only birds seem to ever cross in front ;-p

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Brian ... you seem to be ok with the presentation , you are the artist .
Without wanting to push you into a direction that you might not see or like .... I just think the subject lacks " form / depth / dimension " , looks more " 2D " rather than " 3D " .
I am not making a demo .... you know why :bg3:.

In the end it matters that you like the output !!!!

Cheers Andreas

[Basil Dardagan]

Cheepers what an interesting creature......The nose, tongue ,claw and 'shoulder?' all in close proximity make for fascinating viewing imho. The IQ is out of this world. So incredibly well presented imho

[Brian Sump]

Hi Brian ... you seem to be ok with the presentation , you are the artist .
Without wanting to push you into a direction that you might not see or like .... I just think the subject lacks " form / depth / dimension " , looks more " 2D " rather than " 3D " .
I am not making a demo .... you know why :bg3:.

In the end it matters that you like the output !!!!

Cheers Andreas

Always value your feedback Andreas. I am newer to general wildlife photography vs avian; welcome all the feedback I can get. Your point definitely makes sense, TY.


Cheepers what an interesting creature......The nose, tongue ,claw and 'shoulder?' all in close proximity make for fascinating viewing imho. The IQ is out of this world. So incredibly well presented imho

Basil, these words are meaningful. Thank you very much!

[Gabriela Plesea]

Super thankful for all the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it overall. Gabriela, this was a first for me seeing them in person - they do not usually venture up as far north as Denver, Colorado area.

Where would you all add the tonal depth? I think the scales on the face are actually pretty accurate.

Did do a mids adjustment with lum masks at a pretty good amount early on in the processing flow. If you look at that darker scale on the shoulder, a little below the eye and the ones to the left of that, they are pretty rich and represent the actual tones in that range well IMO.

Definitely open to further thoughts/perspectives on this one though :-)

Dear Brian,

Thank you kindly for reply. Apologies for taking so long to get back to you, stuck at work this evening doing all sorts of backups because of load shedding (in SA we have power/electricity cuts for many hours every day...).

Must admit I have never seen this species in real life, so maybe it is unfair to ask you to add more emphasis to the subject. Just felt you could add some depth to those scales so that the Armadillo stands out more, you have the skills and know how to do it if you think it's appropriate. Blend modes, lumo masks, curve adjustments, whatever works for you.

Love this frame and so happy to see you post here, hope to see more from you. Will join you soon, been away for a few weeks and brought back a few images - hope to find the time to process and share them! And maybe find one or two for the avian forum:w3

Kind regards,

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Brian, neat little critter, they are in Florida digging up our flower gardens looking for grubs. Point of interest, they have been known to carry Leprosy. You work differently than me developing images but I would mask the subject in Lightroom/ACR and lower the highlights and darken the shadows a tiny bit. Nice, interesting image, thank you for sharing.

[Steve Kaluski]

I would add a Curves Midtone to give it that bit more bite/oomph Brain.


I am not making a demo .... you know why

Why not make a demo Andreas, it clarifies/bolsters feedback?

TFS
Steve

[Dorian Anderson]

I dunno, this looks pretty frickin' sweet as presented. Could you tweak a few things to exaggerate some of the tones/vurves that other have mentioned? Sure, but it's far, far from necessary. I love these little guys so it's a joy to see this guy so well!