Antelope - Hilary Style

[Maureen Allen]

An antelope image I had from my Yellowstone trip enhanced using Hilary's workflow as a guide. I used 5 different textures from Shadowhouse with various blending modes and opacity settings. Thanks, Hilary!

Given the direction of the light, I couldn't decide whether I should try to lighten the left eye or leave it as it is.

[Brendan Dozier]

Great looking Antelope capture, Maureen, and nice texture treatment. Like the head-on view and subtle colors. A bit of lightening may help on its left eye as you suggested, and maybe just a bit more sharpening around head. Nicely done!

[Jay Sheinfield]

Hi Maureen,
A subdued feeling for sure. Generally, I might suggest more room at the bottom for his virtual feet :S3:, in this case, not so sure. Nice capture. You could brighten his left eye a bit. I'll leave it to Hillary to comment on the BG, other than I think it suits the image just fine.

[denise ippolito]

Maureen, I gotta try Hilary's technique! Nice looking base image and I think you did a great job w/ the texturing and vignette.:S3:

[Maureen Allen]

Thanks for the comments :S3:

[Hilary Hann]

Maureen, I've only just logged back into the forum (flat out like a lizard drinking at the moment :2eyes2: ) and saw your post. Firstly I feel really honoured to have such a nice image with my name associated to it. I love pronghorns and can't wait to see one in the flesh.

A couple of things on backgrounds which I've found from trial and error. The more information in the background, the harder you have to work to get a suitable effect with regards to colour and feel. You've managed pretty well, but I've tended to move away from vegetation as much as possible because it can be sooooo frustrating. Textures making the light work in mysterious ways! :w3

One thing I will do when using many textures layers, is to use a layer mask to reduce some of the texture over the main point of interest. In this case you could bring back the antelope a bit towards his natural self without reducing the nice feel of the image. I personally would work on the eye to lift it a bit and would probably do a bit more selective sharpening around the eyes especially. I would also do a slight ccw rotation to straighten up the animal and the strong foreground line, then take a smidge off the rhs and perhaps the top depending on how much the crop reduces background (you can always add canvas).

I'm so impressed and really look forward to more. :S3:

[Maureen Allen]

Thanks so much for the pointers, Hilary. I will work a bit more on this image and have a few others I'd like to try this technique with as well. I very much appreciate your help. :S3: