I had the good fortune of spending yesterday afternoon at a nearby sheep ranch. This is lambing season and the place is hopping. The ranch has 4,000 ewes and 80% have twins. Do the math. The ewes are brought into a series of corrals, birthing sheds and small post partum corrals. The over all process is not far removed from the labor and delivery service of a large urban city/county hospital. Shades of my experience in medical school and internship. Aware of the current theme, I focused on back lit images late in the day.
In ACR I increased the blacks, then used Nik Siver Efex Pro and Nik CEP4 Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor with a thin subtle border.
when I first opened this up, it was too big for my screen, (not your fault, just needed to reduce my screen size). As I started to scroll down the photo, it seemed blurred, and then began to get sharper and then...there was that one looking at me! Love that concept. the highlights, backlighting make it stand out in ways that just a "color" shot could not. love it.
Delightful Gary. I like the repeating shapes, and the one ewe with it's head turned. I wonder about a crop to the bottom where the one shape forms a semi-circle, but doesn't touch the frame? Amazing that they have twins.
I really like what you've done with this -- both the initial shot and the processing. It was definitely made for black & white. The low depth of field is a plus, and that sheep in front looking out from the image is priceless.
I'd suggest a couple things to both add even more depth and build upon the appeal of the sheep in front. One is to linearly increase the blur. (I did it with the bokeh adjustments in Alien Skin Exposure, but it could also be done with the blur filter and a gradient mask in Photoshop.) The other is to add a black gradient from the top to the head of that sheep.
BACKLIT SHEEP-THEME
