Regal

[Martin Dunn]

Nikon D300s
Nikon 300mm f4 telephote + 1.4TC (420mm)
f8
1/640s
ISO400

hand held

shot in Madikwe GR

RAW conversion in Nikon Capture
prepared for output in Photoshop Elements

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Martin - I think the pp on this is much better than some of your earlier posts. Nice detail and sharpness. I do wish the head angle was a bit more toward the viewer. Check out the long thread in the Educational Resource Forum on head angle fine points. They apply equally to non-avian wildlife. There's also what looks like some heat haze in the bg. I'm not sure if NR will help or if there is another way to fix it. Maybe someone else has a suggestion on how to deal with it. I would also give the eye a bit of a lift. There's a little detail there that you can bring out.

TFS,
Rachel

[Diane Miller]

Wonderful sharpness and color against the soft BG! Love the pensive look. A little more eye detail would be great.

Heat waves are heat waves -- no filter for them yet, except maybe on a supercomputer. I like the look as long as the subject is sharp -- it's reality.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Wonderful sharpness and color against the soft BG! A little more eye detail would be great. Heat waves are heat waves...

Exactly my thoughts. Heat waves are just as part of the scene as a dam or mountain and portraits the heat experienced at that moment. No need to remove it IMHO.

Nice one - well done, Martin!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Martin,
nice detail and sharpness, head angle already covered by Rachel.
BG is a bit cluttered for my liking , not much you could do, would try to run negative clarity on the BG to see if that helps by just lowering the contrast.A bit tight on top , but no deal breaker. Plus one for opening up the eye.

TFS Andreas

[Nancy Bell]

Giraffe is lovely, beautiful colors and details. Some possibilities on reducing the impact of the bkgd; experiment reducing the saturation of the bkgd and/or use a slight Gaussian blur; selectively decrease the blacks on the branches to make them less obvious and a bit duller. Be sure to mask out all effects on the giraffe. In the field use an aperture for a bit less depth of field, or vary your choices if you have time, and see what turns out best at home. A bkgd of tree branches is certainly natural for a giraffe.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice light on this chap, Martin. I usually would agree with comments on the busy BG, but in this case it actually seems to work for me...

Heat haze being what it is - for those commenting about it on this thread - heat haze can severely affect sharpness and clarity, especially at large distances between the photographer and subject. Here not so much, but heat haze is something we need to look out for, so I don't believe it's part of the scene that needs to be incorporated in compositional design...