Zebra portrait

[Glenn Pure]

Another shot from Timbavati reserve in Kruger area of South Africa. I liked the fine looking mane on this zebra and the nice head turn he/she gave me. Cropped from horizontal frame, virtually full frame vertically.

Thanks for looking and any comments you may have.

Technical: Canon 80D with Lens EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/800, f7.1, ISO 800. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, Sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default luminance NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements. Very modest NR applied to animal and stronger NR to background. Some blur applied to background which was also darkened relative to the zebra to create more separation. Sharpened animal only (sharpness function: remove Gaussian blur, radius = 0.4 pixels, 50%) after final size reduction.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Glenn - Very nice light and yes, the head turn is good with nice light illuminating the eye. Did you have to recover the whites a lot? Some areas like the far ear look like they lack detail.

TFS,
Rachel

[Jonathan Ashton]

Very nice indeed I like the colours and the OOF trees make for a nice presentation.

[John Whaley]

Sharp and detailed. I like the oof trees in the BG. Portrait composition works well. I have never seen one in the wild. TFS.

[Glenn Pure]

Hi Glenn - Very nice light and yes, the head turn is good with nice light illuminating the eye. Did you have to recover the whites a lot? Some areas like the far ear look like they lack detail.

TFS,
Rachel

Hi Rachel. I didn't do a lot to recover the whites - no selective work anyway. I just set my white point and highlight sliders. But having read your comment, perhaps I could add a bit of contrast to those areas to bring out some more detail.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

I am not mad about square crops. Personally, in this situation, if I were going for a portrait image, I'd flip the camera over to vertical and fire. For me, I feel you have processed this image too much. The BG looks too clinically smooth.

However, I can see what you were trying to achieve and seems like you had great light to shoot in.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you very much Rachel, Jon, John and Akos for your thoughtful and helpful comments - always appreciated and always interesting to see the diversity of views on an image.

I am not mad about square crops. Personally, in this situation, if I were going for a portrait image, I'd flip the camera over to vertical and fire. For me, I feel you have processed this image too much. The BG looks too clinically smooth.

Fair point on the crop and framing during capture. I avoid square crops, partly because I know they aren't popular... but sometimes, I think they work and this was one case where I thought a near-square crop did. Not sure if the over-processing you were concerned about was just the background? I didn't add a lot of blur but did want to reduce it's dominance. I didn't do a great deal on lighting except to make the background less obvious by darkening and tweaking highlights, shadows and midtone contrast but not in any excessive way, I thought. But if there were other issues with the processing, please let me know.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

For me, the BG looks to smooth. If you know what you mean. Too perfectly clean, More than any other aspect of the image. . That's all.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Glenn I quite like the portrait and the slight turn of the head works for me. I do think it needs more separation between the head and BKG (probably through colour and exposure), but also feel the BKG is just too smooth. Detail around the eye is almost there (the muzzle has lovely detail, definition and Form), as it's a very tight frame it needs to be perfect. BTW was the FP bang on the eye? Agree on the ears lacking detail this is where using Layers and masks helps to target those specific areas requiring some attention, Contrast will not do this, only heighten the difference between White and Black.

TFS
Steve