Posted by Shaun Simpson on November 7, 2010 at 12:47 PM
Hi All
Thought I would post this one from today, nothing to special just a grey squirrel, but he amused me for an hour and I liked the pose.
techs
D300, Nikon 300mm f4, 1/200@f5,6
As usual all critiqe welcome, thanks for looking.
Hi All, thanks for the advice and I have reposted the image reworked on, all the excellent advice you get on this forum is what makes it one of the best around
Posted by Oscar Dewhurst on November 7, 2010 at 12:51 PM
Great shot - nice pose and bg
Oscar
Posted by Austin Thomas on November 7, 2010 at 3:15 PM
Hi Shaun,
The all important eye appears to be sharpest part of the image which is good.
I would try and tone down the bright areas in the BKGR on the RHS if possible and the white "mark" on the stone in front of the squirrel.
Nits already covered. A nicely captured image Shaun.
Posted by Phil Shaw on November 8, 2010 at 10:20 AM
An engaging portrait, but its a bit too dark for me. I would lift the mid-tones to make the image quite a bit brighter.
I leave my cameras set to auto white balance all the time and I'm assuming that you had your camera set to auto white balance when you took this as the neutral tones have come out with a blue cast due to the heavy overcast/shade. You might want to think, therefore, either about re-processing it and applying a different white balance, or neutralising the blue-cast in Photoshop. There are a number of way of addressing this - you can use the white-point/grey-point/black-point droppers in Levels to automatically neutralise a cast, but probably the best way is to set a colour sample point on something that should be neutral (white/grey/black where each of the three colour channels has the same value) and use a Levels adjustment layer and the Info palette to raise the individual red and green channels so that that they are more or less equal to the blue channel value. Another method that I often use is to open a hue/saturation adjustment layer and just de-saturate the blue channel until it looks natural - quicker and just as effective if less precise.
I'm not too bothered by the bright patches in the background and I think you just have to accept it for what it is. In my experience it is very difficult to do anything about these types of backgrounds in post-processing that looks natural without virtually replacing it.
Posted by Shaun Simpson on November 8, 2010 at 3:49 PM
Hi All, thanks for the advice and I have reposted the image reworked on, all the excellent advice you get on this forum is what makes it one of the best around
Discussion
6 repliesThought I would post this one from today, nothing to special just a grey squirrel, but he amused me for an hour and I liked the pose.
techs
D300, Nikon 300mm f4, 1/200@f5,6
As usual all critiqe welcome, thanks for looking.
Hi All, thanks for the advice and I have reposted the image reworked on, all the excellent advice you get on this forum is what makes it one of the best around
Oscar
The all important eye appears to be sharpest part of the image which is good.
I would try and tone down the bright areas in the BKGR on the RHS if possible and the white "mark" on the stone in front of the squirrel.
Cheers
Austin
a rather nice shot of a gray squirrel sharp where it counts
I agree with Austin about the background and would clone the bird poo out from the rock. Others will disagree no doubt.
I leave my cameras set to auto white balance all the time and I'm assuming that you had your camera set to auto white balance when you took this as the neutral tones have come out with a blue cast due to the heavy overcast/shade. You might want to think, therefore, either about re-processing it and applying a different white balance, or neutralising the blue-cast in Photoshop. There are a number of way of addressing this - you can use the white-point/grey-point/black-point droppers in Levels to automatically neutralise a cast, but probably the best way is to set a colour sample point on something that should be neutral (white/grey/black where each of the three colour channels has the same value) and use a Levels adjustment layer and the Info palette to raise the individual red and green channels so that that they are more or less equal to the blue channel value. Another method that I often use is to open a hue/saturation adjustment layer and just de-saturate the blue channel until it looks natural - quicker and just as effective if less precise.
I'm not too bothered by the bright patches in the background and I think you just have to accept it for what it is. In my experience it is very difficult to do anything about these types of backgrounds in post-processing that looks natural without virtually replacing it.