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Thread: Rosetta

  1. #1
    Story Sequences Moderator and Wildlife Moderator Gabriela Plesea's Avatar
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    Default Rosetta

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    Rosetta is one of the most beautiful leopards I have seen and what made her even more special is that she did not mind us one bit while we sat in the car only meters away from her. We watched her quietly for over an hour, she was focused on a few springbok in the dry riverbed and if it wasn't for a couple of crows that gave her away (flying right above her and shrieking) she might have attempted to hunt. At some point she stood up and yawned, her head turned away from us. A long stretch followed and she came towards us a little, climbing down the fallen tree you see in this image, then slowly walked in front of the car and rolled in the sand. It was difficult to take photographs, she was just too close. Also, her eyes were slightly closed - the sun was just too strong. I have a few special images of her, this is one I found more difficult to process because of all the branches and the shadows etc. Let me know please if you can think of any way to improve it.

    EXIF:

    Nikon D3S
    Nikon 300mm
    1/1600s
    F7.1

    Kind regards,
    Gabriela Plesea

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    BPN Member Douglas Bolt's Avatar
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    Love it! The light adds to the feeling of the location. My only thought towards improving an already excellent image might be to darken the top 1/4. It tends to lead my eyes toward the out of focus tail.
    Douglas Bolt
    DougBoltPhotography.com

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    Lifetime Member Rachel Hollander's Avatar
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    Hi Gabriela - I looked at this earlier but wanted to look at it on my calibrated monitor when I got home. She does look relaxed. I really like the pose with the paw on the branch, the eye level pov and the curled tail. You handled the dappled light well. It looks like you had the ss to maybe even get a bit more dof. There's a very slight blue/cyan cast in some of the shadows so I would drop those slightly.

    TFS,
    Rachel

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    Gabriela, great image, nice pose and well composed to include the tail. I think you handled the dappled harsh light well, agree with Rachel, i would drop the cyans and the blues a tad, it may be worth while to tone down the highlights and whites at towards her rump and along her tail.

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    Wildlife Moderator Steve Kaluski's Avatar
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    Hi Gabriela, a very, very nice image indeed. Love the stalking posture and that curved tail. I'm not sure if a little more space to the LHS & above may help, that's if you have the image content, perhaps worth exploring? Agree on the blue coming through on the whites, easily corrected. I think you just need to watch your highlights/exposure may need to drop it a fraction, or add a mid tone to help things overall. The dappled light is great and I think adding perhaps a small Graduate adjustment to the top RH corner/edge may help balance things too? adding a luminosity adjustment layer and adjusting that may also help the FG areas. Remember, by using adjustments & masks you can target key areas and not just globally apply.

    I think with some subtle tweaks this will elevate the image to where it needs to be, VWD.

    TFS
    Steve
    Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.

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    Lovely portrait.... I agree about with comments on blue cast and some space to LHS if you don't have easy enough to do with content aware etc ..

  7. #7
    Story Sequences Moderator and Wildlife Moderator Gabriela Plesea's Avatar
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    This is Rosetta without any PP work, I converted the RAW into JPEG to show you what the image looked like...I can certainly give her some space on the LHS and try to darken a bit at the top. About the blue cast-I shall try again. I did see it and did my best but failed. I am tempted to start again with this image from the beginning
    Gabriela Plesea

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    Wildlife Moderator Steve Kaluski's Avatar
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    This is why Gabriela, IMHO it's best to work on the whole image, retain the MASTER file as a PSD with ALL layers in tact, so you can revisit the image time & time again to make further refining adjustments, with multiple options on cropping too. It may create a larger file in the long run and you can always delete layers that are redundant later, but think about the time saving.
    Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.

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    BPN Member Morkel Erasmus's Avatar
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    Great advice given above. I actually like the OP crop and you handled the light very well. I would agree to darken highlights as a whole (particularly the white fur) through luminosity masking as it will add some depth to the cat as well.
    Morkel Erasmus

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  11. #10
    Story Sequences Moderator and Wildlife Moderator Gabriela Plesea's Avatar
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    Thank you Steve and Morkel Steve-I am working in layers now, so I can go back and make adjustments Do not know why it took me so long, CS6 gets easier by the day, all I needed was a few evenings of practice

    Warmest regards,
    Gabriela Plesea

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