Big Bull Elephant

[Loi Nguyen]

This is certainly the largest bull elephant I have ever seen.

1DX
500f4 II + 1.4X III
1/800
f8
ISO-400
Hand held

Appreciate your comments.

Thank you

Loi

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - nice look at the big bull and the vertical comp works well. Although this is one where I might have tried to shoot at a bit of an higher angle to get the bottom of the tusk. Again though it feels a bit thin and washed out. Did you open up shadows significantly? I would select the ele and then do a levels adjustment bringing in the rhs slider to about 222-225 and then a curves adjustment. On the curves adjustment I would start with the preset medium contrast adjustment and then play with opacity and the curve to taste. I'm sure others will have more suggestions. It's a nice, clean image with good sharpness so definitely worth the time and effort to take it up a notch.

TFS,
Rachel

[Morkel Erasmus]

A proper old-school tusker! Impressive specimen. I too feel it looks sub-optimised in the exposure and a few tweaks would help it along nicely. Let's see what others chime in and perhaps I can play around with it tonight. I presume it's almost full frame? Would have liked a tad more space to our RHS in front of the big boy.

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Rachel and Morkel, thank you for your comments. for dark subjects like elephants, I have the tendency to increase brightness. For this image, I increased the exposure in DPP by 0.5EV before RAW conversion. Here is a RP with the exposure as setting in camera. I also have a little bit of room on both the left and right. So the RP is a FF with only a little bit off the top and minimum PP. Only set levels, color balancing, NR reduction of BG (which is really not necessary), and selective sharpening of the subject. Appreciate your feedback.

thank you.

Loi

[Brendon Cremer]

Great Elephant and a lovely image with great potential. As with the above the image looks a little flat, perhaps open up the image with exposure as a whole and then selectively add a little more contrast and clarity to the Ele itself it should help to bring out the textures a little more, you may need to pay some attention to the tusks to to just add a little more detail back.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Loi, I didn't read any comments until after I looked at the image so please take this into account.

Now again, done on the laptop so I could be way off, however all I did was adjust the white in Levels 216, just before they clip, but masked the tusks, up the Blue to give a little more depth/richness, added a basic mid tone and then applied a small amount of USM to the the big old unit. I do like the idea of being a frame filer, nice, clean and simple, like it! Not sure about having the ext on, might have shot if time allowed both ways, good techs.

TFS
Steve

[Loi Nguyen]

Steve, I see now how you got more details out of the OP without having it too dark and not wash out. Don't think I understand the "added a basic mid tone and then applied a small amount of USM to the the big old unit," but I can catch up with you later.

Thanks

Loi

[Steve Kaluski]

Loi, as I said to Gabriela, most of the work is done in LR or RAW converter, I think you can do more here without adding perhaps more in PS? Mid tone is an action I use, but I can apply 8 different areas within light, mid & dark, but ultimately it's getting those basics right that we can cover. Again, as I mentioned to Gabriela, do as much as you can with the RAW before it goes to PS as a pixel based image!

[Diane Miller]

Here's a very quick look just using Nik's Detail Extractor, on the original, masked just to the ele. Just to show the drama it can bring out. Of course, optimize as much as possible in RAW conversion first. I often love a touch of Clarity there, after all else is done.