Male Kangaroo relaxing...

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys

Another kangaroo... This was going to be a theme shot but I figured the shot looked better with shoulders and forearms included so I skipped the theme intent. This guy was just sitting and chill out with the girls... life is good. The shot I wanted was with the head looking away but more square on with the body to show the impressive chest muscles. Unfortunately after 2 hours waiting this is as good as I could do...

1D4 & 500F4, Wimberley 2 head and 5 series tripod.
1/320 sec, F10 @ ISO 1600. FF.
Converted in ACR (CS6) setting levels and WB, removed yellow from grass with H&S, luminosity mask to pull back the chest a little, then sharpened and sized etc.

feel free to comments as you see fit...

DON

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Don - If the roo was relaxed enough for you to move around, I think it would have been better to move back enough to get the front legs (or are they arms with a roo?) in the frame. It's also too tight on top for me. I like the way the ears are going in different directions. It seems to me that the ears and chest are sharper than the eyes and nose. Maybe a bit more selective sharpening to the eyes and nose. Nice detail on the chest.

TFS,
Rachel

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Don,

Very cute little fellow, your Kangaroo!
I also think you might have "boxed" him a little too much, nevertheless this is one incredible pose captured! I so wish the legs were in-perhaps taking a bit off the bottom might help? Just to include the elbow?
I have never seen a Kangaroo in real life, let alone photograph one…Love the detail on the body, especially the chest. Have you more images of this cute chap? Would love to see a portrait with lots of detail on the face

Kind regards,

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Don,
cool looking Roo, very relaxed pose you captured.
Nice details in the body and the lighter parts , but the face is a tad dark and lifeless and flat in tones, maybe the head is competing with the very light almost blown looking BG.Maybe processing the image twice would help in this case, or a better Raw converter for recovering HL , LOL Steve K.
He will blame me for that ?!
Honestly i think this could be fixed to make it look more pleasing .The WB looks a tad too much on the warm side ?Just my thoughts.

TFS Andreas

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Don, very cute and relaxing pose. other folks already gave you good suggestions on the crop, so i would focus only on the techs. At F10, you should have good DOF on the eye and nose, but the image looks soft to me around these critical areas. Since this is also a darker part of the image and there was pretty strong highlights in the BG, I suspect that either the image was underexposed and brought up in PP or camera shake (noted that your SS is 1/320). The other issues regrading the highlights int he BG or the crunchiness of the fur can be fixed, but the softness of the head is hard. Do you have other images where at 100% crop the image looks sharp? If you do, please post and folks here can help you with the PP. Loi

[Don Railton]

Hi all

As usual in the wildlife forum, lots of positive and useful critique... thank you all! I wont address all the comments individually, but I will say the framing when shooting was intentional tight because I planned a 'head shot' for the theme, but I didn't like the head only and preferred this crop once I got back to the computer, hence this post. I have intent to go back again soon for the head only shot, before the end of the month... I want a good B&W Roo portrait...! I will also reprocess this tomorrow (with comments in mind) and check sharpness of the face as I go. I don't think its camera shake. I did use a luminosity mask(s) to darken the chest and lighten the face (harsh OZ sun), maybe this can compromise IQ if pushed??

thanks all again

DON

PS: Rachel, are they arms or legs??? I don't know but I will find out.. The question has me intrigued

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Don - If it were me going for a head shot in the field, depending on your distance from the roo, I would try f6.3 or f7.1 and a little faster ss. Steve will probably say f5.6 (his favorite) but with the long nose, I'm not sure that's enough. Hopefully, you'll have an opportunity with a relaxed one again and can play with different settings.

I didn't mean to give you homework on the arms/legs question but appreciate your finding out.

Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Don, one 'cool' looking dude, like the facial expression.

I agree, I feel f/10 is a wee bit too much, perhaps f/7.1 would have been better and created more SS for you. Providing you get eyes to nose sharp, to me that would be fine. If you are revisiting the RAW the dropping the highlight will help retain a bit more tone and not show 'blown'. I would also drop the yellow and using the Blue channel in Curves up it slightly. Nice detail & sharpness, much better than previous Don. Did you do anything on the face, it seems very balanced with the light, no shadows or darks and I wonder what the slight cast is on the cheeks? Just an observation Don.

TFS
Steve

[Don Railton]

Hi Steve, thanks for commenting.. I used luminosity masks to balance the light on the roo, mainly to darken the chest. I then inversed the mask to lift the face slightly. this will account for the balance I think, but it was not too far out anyway. I used H&S to drop the yellow channel quite a bit because the greens were not green, and I looked at using a selective colour layer on the face (above the nose) to remove a hint of Magenta but at work at the moment and I am not sure I left this layer active.. I also do not have a calibrated monitor (its the next big purchase I want) so the fine tuning of colour I don't do with any confidence yet..


regards

DON

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys.

In the repost I have cropped from the bottom and added a little to the top... I lifted my WB from 5800 to 6000 which seemed to correct the magenta cast I had previously removed with a H&S, I also bumped up the clarity slider more. I used Highlite & shadows to lighten up the chest, then masked out the bg and made that a little darker... It is blown, knew that when I took it but just exposed for the roo... we often have harsh light and you just got to live with it. I have ended up with something I like better than the OP but...what say you? My first attempt at redoing this had me with the very same image as the OP. Interesting I thought...

Now for my home work from Rachel...

Kangaroos apparently are bipedal, meaning they walk on two feet. They also cannot walk backwards, and many believe (incorrectly i believe) this is the reason the Kangaroo is on Australia's coat of arms (Australia only goes forward...) The top limbs were refered to as 'fore limbs' by scientists studing roos locally. I think calling them forearms or just arms will be acceptable... Apparently this study shows that the male roos with the biggest chest muscles were most likely to mate with the girls...An interesting parallel was drawn with those guys pumping iron down at the gym. They continued to say that the extra muscle mass was to the detriment of the roo's health in lean/drought conditions. Finally, female kangaroos have up to 3 joeys on the go at once. One in the pouch, one out of the pouch and an embryo in the uterus whose development can be suspended if there is little food around.. clever (busy) girl. There will be question next week...

DON

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Don - thanks for the info, very interesting and arms it is. I like the comp of the rp much more. Unfortunately, I think the chest and body look too recovered and looked better in the op. What I'd really like to see is the head of the rp on the body of the op. If you can pull it off, we'll start referring to you as Dr. Frankenstein.

Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Don, I think I prefer the OP, not sure if this helps, but this was what I came up with whilst having my first cup of Java yesterday. Just try and balance the HSL in RAW. You may find that toggling between Saturation & Luminance will help regarding adjusting those colours.

Cheers
Steve