Chobe ele and calf ever patient with the boat

[Carl Walker]

Elephant and her calf drinking off a sand bank on the Chobe river
ACR basics
PS CC14 - levels, curves,sat layer, sum for web

7d - 70 - 200mm F2,8 Mk II

ISO 800 - f4 - 1/1250 sec - @160mm

C&C welcome thanks

[Andre Pretorius]

Ellies well processed Carl, I think you should tone down a bit on BG behind the subject..

The falling droplets from the cow and their boots adds a lot.

Love the little @*** giving you the trunk!!!

Dodging what is left of her tusks might enhance them?

Andre

[hennieloots]

Nice pose & composition, Carl. The youngster's trunk position adds to the image. Also like the wet feet on the mom. IMHO the contrast/sharpening (not sure) is a bit to harsh on the ellies; I agree with Andre re the BG.

Hennie

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Carl , i quite like the overall comp and the pose of the youngster .
By not knowing if you want to achieve that look , but i think the frame looks over processed to me IMHO.
The blacks does look plugged to me. Have you used Nik tonal contrast on this one? Or similar ?

I would go for a processing like your Impala frames , specially the colorful portrait was the best so far from processing POV , all saying this as my personal view .

TFS Andreas

[Carl Walker]

Thanks Andre, Hennie and Andreas.

I have to learn to take a break when doing this stuff.

After I posted we had a localised power cut - something that occurs regularly out here. Looking at it then I thought it does not look right and too over processed. Most of all I now realise that it does not have the dof I thought was there and image quality not so great. You are right on the nose Andreas. I was trying Nik Tonal contrast and it looked quite good at the time. So this is a repost attempt at an image probably not worth keeping

I did however try using a graduated filter to tone down the brighter parts of the sand in the upper frame. So its a lot softer now overall.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Carl, sorry but neither version looks "right" to me. The OP looks washed out as if you did too much shadow recovery. The RP looks unnatural with that dark grad at the top, plus it also looks a bit "HDR" to me.

Would you mind posting an unaltered export straight from RAW so we could play with it? I would also entertain the thought of you sending the RAW file via Dropbox so I could work it up properly?

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Carl , it looks like an experiment .
Agree with Morkel about both version not really working , hits the nail on the head , Morkel .
Steve once told me , get to know your tools , and when you know what you are doing play around . And he was right . not saying that i am all the time knowing what i do , but i am acting more sensible with the contrast tools , at least i think this .

I am open for sending the raw to me , if you wish . Better would be try to work conservative with this frame , try to achieve a look like with the Impala male you posted not long ago .If you have done this i would go for the unconventional way and compare the two .

My thoughts , regards Andreas

[Carl Walker]

Here is the image unaltered.

Not sure where I am going wrong now.

Appreciate this Morkel - Never used drop box but if I find out I don't mind sending the raw file. I'll look into it now!!

Andreas I understand what you are saying and the advice is good. I am here to learn which is why I participate here.

Thanks for the interest.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Carl , looks way better .
Just need to open up shadow , the soft way .

Better and easier way for sending files is , "WeTransfer", have a look .

When i come down i`ll show you my way how to deal with this , if you wish .

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Carl, the original looks far better and I feel it's more about getting the exposure right. I would expose for elephants and not the background, look/watch your camera's histogram and if you get a good spread without clipping either side you should be good. Based on this I would leave the BKG as is and double process so you have two images one for the elephants, the other for they BKG and combine.

The OP looks as mentioned, too processed and Contrasty, the second shows signs of a Graduate filter, but still far away from the original capture. On your next image try and not use the Contrast slider.

I like the off set position and playful calf, agree that certainly more DoF would have been correct, but then you would have needed to raise your ISO too. Perhaps the new MKII might be worth a view and looking at the more in-depth spec it's certainly far better all round and I trust a lot more forgiving on Exposure.

TFS
Steve

[Gabriela Plesea]

Carl? Wait until I show you my first attempts at using NIK

I am not going to repeat what has already been said, Andreas and Morkel offered to RP and I look forward to those versions, having read their suggestions above. This is a lovely image and I am quite taken with the little ellie and his trunk in the air, a keeper IMO and worth spending some more time on it.

You got an important piece of advice from Steve - which I also received at some stage - regarding that contrast slider. These days I am only using it in B/W conversions, when needed.

Wonder what are you working on tonight? A lion, perhaps? Hope it's not the same one I am busy with

Chat soon, have a great day tomorrow!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Waiting for the raw

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Carl - This is a great learning thread and I too am a big believer in "less is more" when it comes to pp. Getting it right in the field is the key. Looking forward to seeing what people come up with and how they arrive at their results.

TFS and being open to the learning process,
Rachel

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Carl thanks for the raw , i tried my best with the 7D file in a short time , ooooohh never processed a 7D file before , different to my bodies .
Image was a bit dark , for what i am used for , because i shoot ETTR normally with a bit of overexposing .

WDYT ? Base was Canon DPP and then the rest in PS , no double processing as Steve suggested , easier to do with ACR/LR and smart objects .
Ps : will show you how in a few weeks time , we will find the time ...... for that .

Cheers Andreas

[Carl Walker]

Hi Andreas - As discussed in email its been quite hectic with fires here lately!
I see now how I went wrong. There is a great softish light and you opened the shadows up quite well. The only thing is the bg sand colour tones. I remember it as per the raw but that is minor. I'll work on mine again. Thanks very much and look forward to meeting you soon