One from last night out in the ponds. Lots of toads chorusing and many laying eggs as well. Here is a close-up of a pair in amplexus...the male is on top and the much larger female is below. Fractalius as usual with eyes masked back in, however, the male toad's eyes were only masked back in at about 25% as the eye's protective membrane was covering much of his eyes and they didn't quite work masked back in at 100%.
Andrew, I love your frog fractalius treatment! The female's eyes are incredible as is the pose:S3: I know the male is slightly crooked compared to the female but do you think it needs a slight CCW rotation or is it an optical illusion? Nice work.
05-05-2012, 04:47 PM
John Storjohann
Andrew, this is a pretty wicked image; I agree with Cheryl, it appears to my eye to need a very slight CCW rotation; and I would be tempted to color select the eyes of the mail and use hue/saturation, or Viveza if you have it, to darken the eyes a bit for contrast and "pop" (totally a matter of personal perspective...may not be yours!). It would be interesting to duplicate the layer, try multiply for a blend mode, and lower it to about 18% opacity or so...just to see what it does to the color and texture of the skin...again, just thinking out loud! I'm a big fan of your work with Fractalius..and this is no exception!
05-06-2012, 06:28 AM
denise ippolito
Andrew, Great capture! I love the fractalius effect and the poses.
05-06-2012, 08:01 AM
John Storjohann
This will teach me to comment on photos from my laptop - a work PC, not color managed - looking at this now, on my desktop monitor (color managed) I retract my comments about darkening this with a layer of multiply..the colors, saturation and tone look great! You'd think I would know better...:bugeyed:
05-07-2012, 06:53 PM
Andrew McLachlan
Much thanks for the comments folks. Cheryl, good eye...I think it could use a smidge rotation.