African wild dog pups find a relaxing moment in the road as they await the alpha female returning with their breakfast. Shot in deep early morning shadows. Did my best in tough circumstances.
Location: Mala Mala, South Africa
Canon 6D
Zeiss 80-200mm @200mm
f/5.6 1/1000 ISO 2000
Handheld and manual focus
LR: Highlights full left, shadows full right and set minimal white/black points, crop for comp
PS CC: Topaz Denoise, some lumo masks, smart sharpening
Hi Ed - It's always exciting to see wild dogs. I'm still not sure why you process by moving the highlights and shadows sliders all the way to their extremes. It results in a thin image and should be unnecessary if the image is properly exposed in the field. As it is some of the whites lack detail e.g. the tail of the dog in the fg and some of the blacks are choked. I like the pose of the stretching dog and of the dog in the fg. It's unfortunate that the other dogs are facing away from the camera. I haven't been to Mala Mala but have been to the properties around it. For me, the reds are too strong but I wasn't there. Here's a repost where I dropped the reds globally and then dropped them further on the dogs. There's also some cyan and blue creeping in on the dogs in places so I corrected that. I opened the midtones a bit on the dogs in a levels adjustment mask and finally gave the dogs a bit more punch in curves. WDYT?
A very nice image! I don't find the colors in the OP to be too red, but that can be a browser issue. IE seems to boost reds while Firefox is more neutral. There is some warmth to the image, but I find it believable. There are traces of cyan, though, as Rachel spotted, and looking back and forth, her correction is more consistent with the soft light.
Looking at the histogram (you have to convert the sRGB JPEG to the PS working space for it to be accurate), there are tones going down to black, although I agree the image does look a bit thin. The color sampler tool shows the whites in the tail as just short of blown out -- but it does look quite bright.
Don't just automatically push the shadows and highlights all the way -- every image is different and the adjustment of each slider depends on the subject and initial exposure. And they need to be balanced with any changes to the exposure slider and the others in the General section of LR/ACR. Use the histogram for reference. Going too far with the sliders can give a very flat image, but this one doesn't have that look to me. I might lower the Exposure slider a little or back off pushing the Shadows all the way.
Patiently Waiting. . .
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