Theme: Just a walk in the park.

The Ruaha Nat Park that is.:bg3:
On this particular morning we would have seen over 2000 elephant, all making their way to and from the Ruaha River for a refreshment.
It made for spectacular viewing in the midst of a beautiful green season which is the ele's favourite time of year with food in plentiful supply and screamed for a B&W conversion, at least to my eyes.:S3:

D3s 80-400AF-S 1/250s f/14 ISO800@ 80mm. ACR PS CC, I boosted the colour saturation more than normal which gave me more tonal range/depth overall, plus playing around in B&W with the yellow, green & red sliders in CC gave me this version.

Almost F/F, cropped out a trailing ele leg in front. My own crits would be to not have the cloud pattern cut and also some more walk in room for the leading ele's (my own small crop didn't change that).

C & C most welcome

Cheers
Marc

I love this, Marc! Specifically the contrast of the light ele backs / shaded under carriages placed against a dark top (i.e. sky) / light grassland (have you detected that contrast too?). A contest winner in my books!

A very well balanced picture well suited to b & w. It also lends itself to a genuine pano crop at about half the current height.

Hi Marc - very nice classic scene. I agree with your self-critique on wanting a little more space on the lhs for the ellies to walk into. There's something going on in the sky, not sure if it is pixilation or compression artifacts.

TFS,
Rachel

Thanks Colin & Rachel

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Driscoll

It also lends itself to a genuine pano crop at about half the current height.

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That's a possibility, but then you would lose all that nice white cloud which adds so much I feel.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rachel Hollander

There's something going on in the sky, not sure if it is pixilation or compression artifacts.

TFS,
Rachel

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Most likely from the heavier than normal saturation and nothing that a round of NR (which I haven't used) won't fix, but it is so slight that it's hardly noticeable to my eyes.:w3

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marc Mol

That's a possibility, but then you would lose all that nice white cloud which adds so much I feel

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Exactly my thoughts. I also thought of suggesting the taking away of a bit on the top at first but when I saw he clouds I abandoned the idea.

You got a nice infrared feel here, Marc. I would have gone a bit darker with the sky and extracted a bit more cloud detail through blurred levels adjustment layers.
In an ideal world a bit more separation between the front cluster of eles would have been nice. Could work as a 16x9 pano crop removing the top clouds?

Thanks Morkel

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Morkel Erasmus

I would have gone a bit darker with the sky and extracted a bit more cloud detail through blurred levels adjustment layers.

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I had tried a blurred adj layer but wasn't happy with the results, it started to look too HDR ish (even for a B&W) for me?
I'm a little surprised you'd contemplate a 16:9 version with the cloud detail that's there? What's acceptable .....I guess, all a personal thing.:w3

I said the pano crop is an option - the jury would then be out as to which is better :w3

Oh Marc, just try the pano crop, see what it looks like - I too feel it would give so much depth to this image, and would bring out the beauty of the trees in the BG! The ellies are stunning, image well processed, lovely sighting!

Kind regards,

Marc really like the content of the image and the conversion you made. I am fine with the overall comp and the cut off clouds . Lovely overall detail and tones.
I do not know what you see , but the sky needs treatment . there is a lot of posterization going on, think this is coming from three edits , the color pushing, the B/W panel ( pushing the sliders is resulting in posterization ) and the compression .
So for me the sky needs to be blurred, just my two cents.

But this is just a minor point.But would improve things……. at least fro me and Rachel ?
TFS Andreas

Hi Marc,
I lik eth eimage but I think that with the ellies so high key the sky is a bit underwhelming. Possible solutions woudl be to darken the sky a bit or crop a bit from the top.

I too see the artifacts in the sky - perhaps also a function of using the luminance sliders in LR? I would try to smooth selectively with a brush in LR/PS.

Otherwise everything else is good. I think Martin has a good point that the sky is a bit lost in amongst all the drama of the eles.

Ed

Thanks Ed

Quote:

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Originally Posted by edwardselfe

I too see the artifacts in the sky - perhaps also a function of using the luminance sliders in LR?

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I don't use LR, but have since smoothed out the sky back in PS, and has come up quite nicely. We'll have to disagree on the clouds though.:w3