Mothers and Babies

[Loi Nguyen]

It was great to see many elephant babies on our recent trip to Kenya and Tanzania. If only if we can stop the poaching, they will have a chance.

5D3
70-300L 4.0-5.6 @ 200mm
f11
1/640
ISO-800
Handheld

RAW conversion in DPP, reduced exposure by 0.5eV
Cool filter to the sky
Selectively reduced highlights and lift shadow on the baby with Curves and quick mask
Levels 5, 110, 248
Luminosity mask, 33%
Curves to increase mid tone contrast a little bit
Vibrance + 10
UMS on the elephants 100,0.3,0

Thank you in advance for your comments

Loi

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Its always great to see herds of elephants and in particular their babies. I too had good sightings in Aug 2013. I like the image, the little one is well exposed and sharp.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Loi,
lovely little ellie group in the wide savannah.
In an ideal world the little one in the back would have been slightly more visible at least to see the eye.
I do think overall the image is too light and lacking contrast .
So here is a quick RP, very quick, not even 2 minutes , just to show a direction.

WDYT?

TFS Andreas

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - Always nice to see a baby ele but this is one of those shots where I wish for a lower shooting angle and more separation between the subjects. I know the former probably wasn't possible due to the vehicle but sometimes you can move a little further away to minimize the effect. I agree with Andreas and his rp has addressed the pp issues but there seem to be some artifacts present in the sky.

TFS,
Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Thank you all for your comments. I need to re-calibrate my home monitor. On my work monitor, he OP looks awfully bright.

Andreas, thanks for the RP.

Loi

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Loi, I like this one, partly for the comp & then the content, just works. I might try going B/W on this one, sometimes the contrast between light & dark or in this case the tones of colour can be masked a little going B/W. I think Andreas's RP is going in the right direction, but for me, somewhere between the two, as I like the more light route as to me, it more reflective of the time of day. My only wish was that there wasn't the little bit of grass just on the forehead of the calf, looks like a green quiff and the tip of the trunk was more visible

TFS
Steve

PS In case I forget, I will see you Saturday just after lunch, will drop you a line later, as I'm just back.