Coupling

[Dawn Currie]

This capture was unexpected. Walking around the back part of Gatorland nature conservatory, away from the crowds my husband and I came upon this couple mating. Other than the two of us, no one else was around. Not every day you can be at eye level in close proximity with these large beasts and maintain safety.

Technical data: Canon EOS 450D, 200mm, ISO 200, f/14, 1/125

[Robert Amoruso]

Dawn,

Good move on the small aperture to gets lots of depth of field. Good action too.

I would suggest the following to reduce the brightness using photoshop.

1) In the channels palette, double click on the RGB channel while holding down the CTRL key (assuming Windows, CMD is MAC). This creates a selection of the highlights.
2) Back at the layers palette, create a BG copy and on the BG copy create a layer mask using your selection. Just click on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the palette. THis will create a grayscale mask.
3) On that BG copy, change the blending mode to Multiply. This multiplies each pixel color by itself. Since highlights are painted much lighter on the mask, this will darken them.
4) Adjust opacity to suit your tastes. Lowering opacity will lighten the image if too dark.

[Dawn Currie]

Robert - thank you! I've already learned something new in PS that I hadn't used before. How do you like the result?

[Arthur Morris]

Great work by both of you. The repost is much better. Filtered light is very tough to deal with. Welcome, and BTW, thanks a ton for your membership support. I would say that he looks as if he is having fun but I would not want to get in trouble here....