Pile of Puppies

[Dumay de Boulle]

We were lucky enough to have a pack of Wild Dogs denning on our neighbours for a few months and got to spend some time with them on several occasions before the pups began to run with the pack.

Canon 5D MKIII
Sigma 120-300 f2.8 OS
AV f4
TV 1/500
ISO 1000

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Dumay - my how they've grown! I can't tell if this is all 9 of them but it certainly is a fun image showing the chaos of their play. Would wish for a couple of faces more visible but that can be a tall order. Am at work so not on good monitor now and will leave colors and tones to someone else. A fun image!

TFS,
Rachel

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Mate, love the soft light, and the colours look good. Organised chaos captured.

[Marc Mol]

Just a great sight to see Dumay, I love WD's and especially here with this rugby scrum they're forming.

[Morkel Erasmus]

I love the energy in this image, Dumay, and the one visible eye actually makes it for me. Nicely framed, I'm sure there's a whole sequence here and picking one out is the hardest.
I hope to find the Mana Pools dogs over the weekend!
I would add a hint more midtone contrast overall?

[Dumay de Boulle]

Thanks for the comments folks...My favourite carnivore. I love these guys. I agree it would have been nice to have more heads or eyes visible.
Morkel...or someone, if you could advise on how to add mid tone contrast as I have looked for that option and cannot seem to find it....thanks!

[Carl Walker]

Very nice image of them all in a heap Dumay and well processed.

[Russell Johnson]

Thanks for the comments folks...My favourite carnivore. I love these guys. I agree it would have been nice to have more heads or eyes visible.
Morkel...or someone, if you could advise on how to add mid tone contrast as I have looked for that option and cannot seem to find it....thanks!

Good capture of a greeting ceremony, Dumay.

The easiest way is to purchase Tony Kuypher's luminosity masks http://goodlight.us/writing/actionspanel/panel.html as it will give a lot of options to play with.

Mid-tone contrast is applied to middle of a tone curve only and does not affect your highlights or shadows, however, this can be be quite tricky. The easiest method is separate the image based on luminosity in photoshop.

For example, if you hold down ctrl + alt + 2 in PS, it will select all the light pixels up to the brightest highlight only. If you invert this, it will select only dark areas of the image. The mid-tone selection is a subtraction between light and darks. You can then use this as your layer mask to apply a contrast adjustment to mid tones of an image only.

There are a range of selections that a number of people have as actions or use through Tony Kuypers tool panel.

[Dumay de Boulle]

Thanks for all the comments folks. Russell I appreciate you taking the time to give me that info. I will try it!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Dumay first of all the best investment i have ever made for a PS tool , meaning the Tony Kuyper stuff . Makes life a lot easier when it comes to tonal changes .
Regarding the image , first of all very nicely processed as expected .
Like the colors and overall tonal range . Fun looking chaos with these little guys , good that there is at least one eye poking out.In a real nice world they would have faced you , but not much to do to change this.If you have a bit more space on bottom would not hurt .

TFS Andreas

[Morkel Erasmus]

I agree that Tony Kuyper's actions are the best in the business for luminosity selections and adjustments. I have them, but I'm often lazy and I've found I get good results for wildlife images for midtone and local contrast using one of 3 quick methods. You'd have to REALLY pixel peep to spot the tonal differences between these approaches and detailed lumonisity work on wildlife images.
1. LCE (unsharp mask, 10%, 20px) - as a layer and paint selective areas through a mask
2. Nik Tonal Contrast (specific slider settings, contrast type on "fine") - as a layer, adjust luminosity as desired
3. Shadow/Highlights tool but ONLY the midtone contrast slider 12-20 points (all others set to zero).

[Marc Mol]

I agree that Tony Kuyper's actions are the best in the business for luminosity selections and adjustments. I have them, but I'm often lazy and I've found I get good results for wildlife images for midtone and local contrast using one of 3 quick methods. You'd have to REALLY pixel peep to spot the tonal differences between these approaches and detailed lumonisity work on wildlife images.
1. LCE (unsharp mask, 10%, 20px) - as a layer and paint selective areas through a mask
2. Nik Tonal Contrast (specific slider settings, contrast type on "fine") - as a layer, adjust luminosity as desired
3. Shadow/Highlights tool but ONLY the midtone contrast slider 12-20 points (all others set to zero).

Agree with you Morkel, I also have TK's Actions and find them more suitable for detailed landscape work as they are quite involved and time consuming, but excellent when you really want to get
things perfect for printing large.

I'm also with you on the quicker methods and use #'s 2 & 3 quite a bit.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Dumay, love it, great capture and this really conveys the playful & interactive spirit these guys have. Agree with Rachel, these dogs have really grown and envious that you got them out in clear, open space. The colour palette just works, well execute and nicely processed.

Regarding the Midtone I feel you will need to apply this with/as an adjustment layer and mask, avoiding the black & shadow areas as you will begin to loose detail. The white tips of the tail show more 'depth/detail' after application which is helpful. My way is a little different as it builds on the Alpha channels compares to Russell's but may be worth a punt.

Big congrats on this one, wish we could have showed the WD's & Hyena interaction video when we were there.

TFS
Steve

[edwardselfe]

This is just great. Love that they are all engrossed in each other, but you have one eye to give it some focus. Wouldn't change anything at all.
Ed

[Shreyas Mantri]

Dumay,
Visiting this again and again! Love the framing and energy here, especially the coincidence of just one eye visible from this pile!
Being wild dog sighting starved (2 sighting were not enough at Mana Pools recently ), am thinking how fortunate you are to have the denning dogs as your neighbors!

Cheers, and many thanks for sharing!

Shreyas

[Dumay de Boulle]

Thanks for the comments and all the help gents.
Shreyas they are amazing animals, interesting to watch with great character and personality...I am so lucky to be out here every day and to see the things I do.

[Steve Canuel]

The single eye couldn't have been placed more perfectly. The processing of this one is really pleasant to look at and I wouldn't change a thing. Nicely done.