I love the composition and the color on this one even though there is ever so slightly blue cast on the back of the head and on the "nose". I actually don't mind them. Beautiful light, too. Did you shoot this handheld? 1/100 is definitely on the slower side for shutter speed. Do you have other shots with different/higher ISO settings? I am not familiar with the A77 but most cameras could go up to ISO 800 without getting a lot of noise.
Dramatic and very nice image. Good points by Adhika. Don't know where blacks were on the original histogram but I would have left the edge touching the left side a little more. Maybe was necessary to lighten Shadows... The histogram is all in the left half -- I brought it into PS and did a Curves and moved the UL corner left to the start if the info. Then moved the middle of the red and blue channels to remove the blue-cyan cast. Better done in raw.
I might have left a little more room on the right.
Where would a blue cast come from? Would that only happen in post-processing? I did not touch Contrast, but may have eeked Exposure down a bit. When exposing more to push the histogram to the right, it seemed to lighten the background too much and made it feel "blah" to me.
Adhika: I did shoot hand-held. I set ISO in advance of my session, but this gator was down in a ditch where the sun was not brightly shining on the water. I'm pretty sure I was shooting well-exposed shorebirds on one side, and then saw this guy on the other, and just tried to get a shot or two before he went under. Lens was as open as it could be, so I bet I just lowered speed until the light-meter showed 0 or so, and snapped a pic. The ISO change option is not on a dial, so it takes a few steps to change it. I know in the heat of the moment I always forget about ISO as I'm concentrating on aperture and shutter speed (and focus!)
Diane, I'll follow your suggestions and see if I can come up with a view that looses the blue cast but retains the feel for the background color (don't want it too light).
Andrew, this looks great...and a bit scary! I also seem to be able to find casts..blue and magenta. I notice particularly the magenta before any PP work. I also took your image into PS and did a quick curves adjustment. It turned out pretty good. If you don't want to loose the blue BG, mask the subject.
I think we all still get excited when we see a willing subject, so working off the light meter is a very good fall back, I would say.
Hmm -- looks like my sec'y forgot to attach the image from above. Good help is hard to find. Here 'tis. But I'm on my laptop so it may not be perfect.
Color casts can come from the camera's choice of white balance. It is on Auto unless you reset it, and that is often a good choice but will sometimes need some tweaking. It can vary for different zooms on the same subject, depending on how much BG shows. Then it can creep in with processing, too. If there is an area that should be neutral, use the eyedropper in the WB section of LR. May not be perfect but can help you see what's there. Takes practice.
But now it looks too yellow and cyan here -- so maybe disregard. Room light can affect the monitor, too.
Water could probably be darkened with the Highlights slider.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 05-10-2016 at 06:37 PM.
I think you got it right here. You usually don't want to completely neutralize any color in the light. Good work! Mine is way too cyan. Even after a lot of practice, seeing colors correctly isn't easy and it always helps to compare a couple of variations. An easy way in LR is by making a virtual copy, or in PS to turn a color correction layer on and off, or open a copy and tweak it with the original side by side.
Got my eye on you
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