Vervet monkey

[Glenn Pure]

One member of a cheeky troop of monkeys at our first camp in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. The food preparation hut and storage had razor wire around it because of these little ones! This is maybe three quarters of the frame area. I had to play with the colour in this one to reduce the effect of light reflected from the foliage. Hopefully I have it fairly close to neutral.

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 1/160, f7.1, ISO 1600. 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 to monkey and USM modestly applied to preserve detail. Stronger NR to background and highlights reduced there too. Highlights on in focus animal reduced and midtone contrast added. Sharpened subject only (sharpness function: remove Gaussian blur, radius = 0.4 pixels, 50%) after final size reduction.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Glenn -- A very beautiful creature and nice eye contact. You have done considerably well in handling the exposure as lighting situation becomes quite tricky under such circumstances. Might open the blacks to bring those finer details in the subject. That oof leaf around its shoulder is a bit of bummer from my pov .

TFS !

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Glenn - It's fun to watch these guys antics around camp but they can really wreak havoc. I like the relaxed sitting pose and the downward gaze of the vervet. I know you said you struggled with the color but to me there still seems to be a very warm and yellow cast. All I did was adjust the WB here thinking that the fingers were closest to a neutral grey. This resulted in -24 temperature and -2 tint in ACR. WDYT? Btw if it were mine I would also tame the bright white spots of the bg because they draw the eye.

TFS,
Rachel

[Glenn Pure]

Rachel, thanks for your repost. I'm unsure what the 'right' WB is in this case. At first, I though your version went too far to the cooler colours but not so sure now. I think there is a slight blue/cyan tint to your version though but appreciate you taking the time to play with it. For the highlights in the background, I'm not sure what to do about them. Darkening them will simply turn them grey and in my experience, than can often look worse. Any suggestions short of cloning?

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Glenn - I'm not sure. The ones behind the head are completely blown so I don't think double processing for the bg and subject will work. Steve sometimes suggests blowing in color for a blown sky. Perhaps that would work and he can elaborate on it. I agree you don't want to turn them grey.

Rachel

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hi Glenn I too thought original a little yellow and I think Rachel's looks better but I don't think the fur is quite so near to white. I would definitely try patching/cloning, maybe layers/masking to fill in the bright clear areas.

[Mike Poole]

The WB of the original does look too warm, so I'd guess Rachels RP is a lot closer to being accurate. That said, I so like the stare you're getting and the natural surroundings, which had some nice depth to the shot.

Mike

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you everyone for comments. I have redone the colour and used the healing brush to fix the highlights in the background. No other way really to deal with that easily. I think this is a significant improvement so many thanks again.