The Sneeze

[Gabriela Plesea]

Dear BPN Friends,

It feels like a Sunday today as we enjoyed a public holiday and stayed at home - voting day for us in South Africa. I thought I might post an image very dear to my heart but it is one which might not meet your expectations in terms of IQ-sorry!

Some time ago we were invited for a game drive to this special place called Zuka Private Game Reserve. It was overcast, we were in an open game drive vehicle and eventually found shelter from the light drizzle under a canopy of trees. Unbeknown to us (although the driver must have known about it) a small pride of lions were seeking shelter in the same place. Our meeting was so intimate and so special, the lions were resting and seemed unperturbed by our close proximity. I managed a few images although it was quite a struggle, too dark and the environment quite busy, my subjects were piled up upon each other and when I lifted my camera to aim I realised I was just too close. So I bent backward to get focus, put on the VR and tried to keep a steady hand on my Nikon 500 lens that feels heavier every year as I get older.

I was cleaning my folders the other day and deleted this particular image, then changed my mind and put it back. I had this ideas regarding processing and wanted to try them out, hope you like it a bit and please do not be too harsh with your technical crits, there is little I can do to improve IQ but the thought of sharing is nagging me, so here it is!

Techs:
Nikon D3S
Nikon 500 F4
F4
ISO 2500
1/1600s

Wishing you a wonderful evening,

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Gabriela - nice detail and sharpness on the lion cub. I love when you can see the taste buds on the tongue. What pp did you do to create the foggy look to the bg and adult?

TFS,
Rachel

[Ian Cassell]

Oh Gabriela, I am so glad you changed your mind about deleting this one. I love it!

[Don Railton]

Hi Gabriela,

I Love this too, especially the soft mum in the bg... really nice Mother son/daughter moment.

regards

DON

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Gabriela, this is NOT a to-be-deleted pic, it's awesome! Sure, we can find fault with anything if we really want to and the same here but I think you've done very well given your circumstances. Sometimes Mother Nature deals us lemons and then we simply have to use it for making lemon juice - and you did exactly that. I love it, well done!

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Gabriela, a nice balance between Mum & cub, I like the angle/perspective on this too. Techs look fine as there is enough SS to freeze the yawn. The mouth & eye appear to have some DE applied, looks a bit light, as noise is evident slightly in the shadow area within the mouth, just my impression. Still away so will leave it for others re colour, tone & depth. If it was me, I would crop some off the foot of the image & a sliver off the LHS to lose the FG lion. The actual appearance for me gives the impression of an old family portrait, albeit only two subjects. Like Rachel, I'm curious about why you chose to 'knock back' the mother either by Opacity, an adj like Fog or whatever you did? Just watch your masking, see cubs right ear as viewed.

TFS
Steve

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello dear Mods and Friends,

Thank you all for your kind comments, it looks like I managed to grab your attention a bit, and with some lions again! It gets more and more challenging, doing something different with the same subjects...
I used a vignette-blur to achieve this rather strange but intriguing effect, was just playing around since I thought the image on the whole was not sharp enough to do anything serious with it. I recently purchased Nik because I thought I might need that detail extractor from time to time, meanwhile I am just exploring to see what Nik can do for me (or rather, what I can do with it). I extended the blur to help the lioness fade away, my thoughts being " the young fella is not sharp enough, perhaps this will make him more prominent, in other words he would appear sharper against a softer BG". An illusion, and it worked to some extent but I knew that Rachel and Steve would make some serious enquiries as to my unorthodox processing here

Would you like me to do an RP, this time without tricks? Is this really worth it, in your opinion?

I now see that ear Steve, thank you for pointing this out

Kind regards,

[Gabriela Plesea]

Before you say yes or no to my idea of a new RP, here's a basic version of what this would look like without the vignette blur. A quick "after dinner" edit and please do not mind the colours etc. I still feel the lioness takes away too much from the cub - she is bigger, situated just about in the centre of the image, way too prominent for my taste and if I want it otherwise I would have to crop less and include some body parts of other characters (by the way this is a fairly large crop).

Looking forward to your suggestions, I know this has poor IQ but I am always interested in trying a different composition and I love to hear any ideas you might have. IMHO I believe the blur works better, save for the ear bit, a detail Steve pointed out and which I can fix easily.

Kindly notice I adjusted crop as per Steve's suggestion.

Wishing you a great day tomorrow,

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Gabriela, the OP is more appealing to me because the main subject is the cub, but he is quite a bit smaller than mum. In the RP, Mum is too dominant, but not sharp, so becoming distracting. Still the OP has some obvious hand-of-man (or woman) PP, so it is still hard to oull off, but you are moving in the right direction in my viewi

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gabriela,
love this great juxtapose image .
All looks good to me in your RP.But i would edit this for the cub and the adult differently . Just reduce the overall contrast and clarity on the BKG , and you are good to go , just my 2 cents.
The blur vignette is not working me.

TFS Andreas

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Loi and Andreas,

A bit of a rough and quick job but I wanted to try your advice, eliminated "hand-of-woman" elements (thank you Loi!!!) and followed Andreas' advice, masked the BG then reduced contrast and clarity (thank you Andreas!!!) - still a bit of noise from sharpening the whiskers afterwards, I can take care of this and will redo the whole image at the week-end - am I good to go now, Andreas?

Have a fabulous evening,

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice expression and DOF here Gabriela. I must admit I haven't used many of the Nik Efex beyond Tonal Contrast and Silver Efex.
Last repost is the best for me - might need a touch more warmth and a dodge of the eye?

[Gabriela Plesea]

Thank you Morkel, for viewing and advice,

Indeed you are right about the lack of warmth as well as the eye - I only did a brief PP on this and worked mainly on the BG, just to get that softness without the blur.

I only bought Nik recently and playing a bit to see if it was worth the money, so far I used detail extractor and sharpening with some success, planning to use its features mainly when everything else fails...

Have a lovely evening,

[Steve Kaluski]

so far I used detail extractor and sharpening with some success

Keep sharpening to PS.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Allright Mr Detail, your wish is my command...

Andre agrees from the kitchen, he is now tied to the cooking pot and making pancakes for tomorrow's early morning drive to the Hluhluwe/Umfolozi Game Reserve. If no rain, that is...In which case, it's pancakes and Nicaraguan coffee in the study

Have a fabulous Sunday,

[Nancy Bell]

Gabriela, I really like the OOTB effect of the first image. It really puts the spotlight on the little one. And I also like the one in image box #11 as a more realistic image. It's that over-adorable pose of the youngster that grabs the viewers attention and makes this a definite keeper.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Nancy, I nearly moved it to OOTB...

I really appreciate your kind comments, much appreciated!

Kind regards,