Baby Elephant

[Loi Nguyen]

It's always a bit tough to isolate the baby elephant from his family. So, here I decided to go for a tight crop.

1DX
500f4 II
1/800
F8
ISO-1600
Handheld

Cropped approximately 50%

Thank you for your comments.

Loi

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Loi, I like the crop and conversion vey much.
I think either an increase in the whites via Levels, looks to fall short, or a Channel Curves selection on the mid tines, just brings a bit, albeit subtle lift, just to open the image up a fraction. Nice one.

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi -it is difficult to isolate the babies and I think your comp works for this. The second youngster with the raised trunk greatly adds to the image for me. My main issue with the image is the prominence of the rumps of the 2 adults. They are lit better and have more detail so the eye is drawn there. I would darken them a fair amount and then bring up the highlights and midtones of the rest of the image a bit to shift the attention. I did this very quickly to give you an idea but as Steve said a little more tweaking of the midtones is in order. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Steve and Rache, looking back at the PP and realized that I had set the exposure and levels may be before the B&W conversion and didn't check after. Yes, in Levels, the whites were way low, so I boosted up the exposure a bit and set the white points at about 246, the brightest part of the tusk about 237 or so. Also using Curves to darken the rumps of the adults and lifted the shadow on the face f the baby and second youngster just slightly. Hope you like it better. Thanks again for your good suggestions. Loi

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Loi,
very cute the two youngsters , specially the one with the raised trunk, makes this work for me.
I like the conversion all around and your RP is better than the OP . Based on RP i would still darken the bigger Eles a bit more to make them less dominant, even if they do not bother me that much.
Nice one , Loi.

TFS Andreas

[Morkel Erasmus]

The lighter tone of the calf's head helps to lift it out even more, Loi. Crop works well to that effect too. I prefer the RP, and would go even further to burning the surrounding elephants some more and maybe even adding a subtle dark vignette?

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - rp is better but I too would go even darker with the rumps.

Rachel

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hi Loi,

I am still learning about B/W conversions and toning etc, all I can say is I like this very much, well done! Just wondering what the colour version would look like...

Kind regards,

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Everyone, thank you so much for your comments. I was in Germany for work last week and then sadly spent Friday attending my Uncle's funeral. Afterward, my wife and I spent the weekend at Salton Sea looking for Burrowing Owl, so no time to work on any image. I will do some more work here.

Gabriela, i a, I was not happy with the color version. It had a magenta cast and other issues that I haven't figured out how to deal with it.

loi