Meditative

[Colin Driscoll]

For Gabriela. This fellow was enjoying the late evening light and probably offering a prayer of gratitude for surviving Leopard and Tiger for another day. Cropped, some bright spots cloned and a little NR on the background. (In preview just noticed an odd red spot above the eye that I should have removed).

5D3 100-400 @ 400 1/250 f6.3 iso1600

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

You don't get them clearer than this, Colin - well done! I might be picking up some magenta cast but I'll leave it to the more experienced guys to comment on that. Nice composition - great pic!

[Mike Poole]

Cracking pose. The only thing that bugs me is that strand of grass which is intersecting the right shin area. The rest of the obstructions add to the environmental feel of the shot but I find that one distracting.

[Douglas Bolt]

Colin,

Very compelling pose. Reminds of an old man in need of a shave. RP: two curves, one auto and one to darken the background.

[Colin Driscoll]

Thanks Doug, I learned something new about curves.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Colin - I like the pose and the placement in frame. Sharpness looks good too. As with your last languor image there are color issues. There is a heavy blue and cyan cast with some magenta also coming through. I think Doug's rp has only augmented the color issues and is too heavy in the contrast which lost some of the detail in the blacks. I took your op, did a luminosity mask at 50% and then dropped the blues, cyans and magenta in a hue/saturation adjustment. Not having seen these in the wild, some blue may be natural and I may have gone too far in the adjustments. I also cropped just a sliver from the left and above to get rid of the very bright stalk in the llc. WDYT? Keep them coming.

TFS,
Rachel

[Colin Driscoll]

Rachel, I like the crop but you have taken out a but much blue/cyan. It is difficult to say what the real color of anything is when it is dependent on the nature of the incident light. In this case it was right on dusk so most of the light was from the sky with a little from the sunset. I always run an auto curves and then inspect the histogram. If each band is not shifted markedly from either or both ends I leave it alone, otherwise I drag them so that they pretty much overlap. I'll be interested in any other methds too. Thanks. Colin

[Rachel Hollander]

Colin - I suggest you get a copy of Artie's Digital Basics or something similar to develop (pun intended) your basic workflow. Personally I stay away from auto curves. I do use some of the curves presets and then tweak them though but it varies by image.

Rachel

[Andre Pretorius]

The image reminds me of what I feel after a busy day dealing with many difficult patients!!!- the thousand yard stare...

Love it, Rachel's RP took care of all the colour casts.

Cheers

Andre

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Colin!

I am really humbled you thought of me when posting this and I really appreciate it! My partner Andre has a similar image of a baboon, he calls it "The Prozac Guy". Brilliant capture of this chap, he must be really lost in thought - how wonderful they are, so expressive, so serious at times, such great subjects for photography!

Love your thoughts on the image and your sense of humour. Crop is perfect, I see Rachel dealt so well with the colour casts in her RP (please Colin, do not rely on auto curves, they tend to exaggerate things...). Most of us tend to believe the camera does not lie when it comes to colour, but it all depends on your settings as well as lighting conditions. I take it the light was poor when you took this image, given the fact that you had to up your ISO to 1600 and only obtained a shutter speed of 1/250s. An option would have been to shoot at F4 or F5.6 to increase shutter speed and get more light into the lens. Consequently, the BG would be softer and less noise reduction required.

You made me look through my folders for a particular baboon image I took some time ago, will see if I can post it sometime. Keep them coming Colin and keep experimenting, the only way to learn - I am trying to put in approx. 3 hrs every evening when it comes to processing, learnt a lot from the moderators and still feel I have so much to learn...

Have a great week-end!

Kind regards,