Bull Elephant

[Loi Nguyen]

April is a month of plenty of water and food for elephant in the Okavengo Delta. The sky is blue with interesting cloud formation. We just drove out of camp not more than a minute when we spotted this bull elephant crossing the channel with an interesting cloud formation in the background.

5D3
70-200f2.8 + 1.4X III @ 98mm (I shouldn't have bothered with the 1.4X)
1/640
f11
ISO-800
Handheld
rotated and cropped slightly.

Appreciate your comments.

Thank you

Loi

[Colin Driscoll]

What a top portrait, even the tall tussock is in just the right place. Perhaps a little more room for the virtual feet?

[Don Railton]

Hi Loi

Nice Elephant, happily feeding in a pretty setting. I like the cloud too but I feel you did not do them enough justice so I took the liberty of tweaking them slighty.. Hope you dont mind. All I did was to select the sky, and then pulled down the centre part only of a curves layer to increase the mid tone contrast. I would not go too far as then they will compete with the Elephant..

regards

DON

PS I see a faint sharpening halo over the top of the elephant and agree a little more room for virtual feet would improve.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - a very nice portrait of the ele in habitat. I too see the halo along the back of the ele and wish for a bit more room below. You've brought out the textures of the ele and grasses well. Don's rp has done the same with the clouds.

TFS,
Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Don, thank you for the RP. And Rachel, sadly no room below. I have other images with more room below, but I chose to work on this one because of the position of the elephant, the bush in front, and the cloud.

regarding the cloud, it was a bright blue sky day with very bright white cloud. The contrast between the sky and cloud was great, even though the sky wasn't dark. I think in my and Don's RP, we all tried to darken the sky a little more to bring out the contrast, but it wasn't quite the same scene as i recall.. Nature often is actually more beautiful than we can capture on our camera. i will try to work on the cloud later to see if i can ever approach the scene that was there.

Rachel, regarding the halo, what would be the best way to deal with it? Is it a result of the downsizing? I don't see the halo when I work with full resolution, but see it a lot in the reduced resolution. Thank you all. Loi

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Everyone, I relooked at this image and realized that I made a fundamental mistake for reducing the exposure and thus the white too much. i reduced the exposure to avoid burning the tusk of the ele, but in doing so made the white cloud muddy. So i decided to to some burning on the tusk, while keeping the white on the cloud white. I then ran a Nik detail extraction on the sky. Also I felt the OP crop was too tight, so this is an uncropped version except for a small amount of rotation. I could have added canvas at the bottom, but decided that it is not a deal breaker, so left as is. Hope you will like it better. Thank you. Loi

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Loi, agree, loosing the 1.4 would have been good.

For me, everything below the skyline looks a tad too saturated, might ease off a little??? I would suggest you get things in LR (5.4 now) how you want them, then 'double process' and export as Smart Objects for both the sky and the rest, then mask, combine and then work in PS for the final touches & tweaks.

TFS
Steve

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Loi,
great sky with a peaceful looking ele in the FG .
I am fine with the colors in the FG but would go more dramatic in the sky, based on last RP .
I personally would give the elephant a tad more punch in the 1/4 and 1/2 tones , but that is just me ……. my 2 cents.
Good idea of Steve for double processing this kind of frame.

TFS Andreas

[Loi Nguyen]

Steve, I think the FG color is just a little warm. Applying a cooling filter or reduce the temp from 5850 to 5500K helps. I think I will leave this image as is, agreeing with Andreas that that the ele is a bit dull. I will come back to it may be later. Thanks for all your help. Loi