I have been told that you shouldn't process your images immediately right after a trip because you don't look at your images objectivity. Our preference is affected by your real life experience whereas a viewer does not have that experience and therefore will look at your images differently. So I went back to our first trip in Africa in 2013 and found this image. Somehow I didn't think much of it then, but like it a lot more now. Please let me know what you think.
I like this image a lot. Strong composition with the large elephant in the foreground and the line of elephants in the middle ground. The sharpness and texture of the elephant in the foreground is very good. Pleasing B&W processing. This is a very nice image and I'm glad you found it and shared it with us!
Hi Loi - This was well worth revisiting. I think I know who gave you that advice. He can be correct every so often. I much prefer the b&w here and the subtle tones of it. It works very well. Only thing I might try is to bring out a bit more detail in the clouds, maybe try some LCE to do so.
Hi Loi I will leave it to other regarding the more detail feedback as I'm away shooting my owls for the next week, but I do find the LH edge too tight to the last elephant in the BKG. You could have easily moved the camera a fraction to the left to avoid this. However, you could just remove the last elephant which would be easier than to extend the background, but depends on your ethics. Having such a soft colour palette for the environment, having the horizon line running through the main focus I think works. Personally I would also liked more SS, you could easily have gone to ISO1600 with no lose in IQ.
Regarding the other part of your intro...
If you go shooting for the day to the local park, reserve fine, you can edit & process that day no problem. However if you do long haul & more 'exotic' locations such as Bots, Alaska, India etc you do need to do a quick edit of those OOF images, badly composted, poor exposure etc, but, and I say this with some experience Loi, LOL, you are better off returning home and leaving the images for a few weeks and review with a fresh pair of eyes. The reason being is, we are all pumped up with emotions from our return, eager to show our images, trying to find those cracking shots, but often we can make errors in judgement in editing process and discard images that, on reflection could have more in them, or the content is fractionally better, but miss things in our eagerness.
At the end of the day it's your call not mine, I, like others can only advise through experience, but we all work differently and have our own Workflows we have honed over the years that work for us.
Hi Steve, agreed that the last elie is a bit too tight. I was thinking about cropping, but then I would lose the peak of the far hill, so decided to leave as is. Cloning out the last elie would lose the symmetry of calf-mother in 3 pairs, so I'd just leave things as is.
Rachel, I did run a Nik on the cloud, so not sure if I can get more.
I do like the B&W version better. The colors were muted, that was why I didn't process this image 2 years ago.
Steve, you are not the only one who advised us to leave the images aside for sometime before doing PP. It is hard to do, but I do see the logic.
On my last trip, I thought I would come home with many fantastic images of cheetah and leopard since I got to spend quality time with them. But the same images now don't have the same appeal :( because the light or the BG were not as nice. So I think the emotion of seeing the cheetah and leopard up close did cloud my feeling for those images. In other words, I'm more objective in looking at them now than I was on the safari.
Hi Loi -- A very nice BW image here !! I also agree with what Rachel and Morkel has to say abt the clouds . and thanks for sharing ur view abt the post processing of images after a trip .