What technical feedback would you like if any? This was a stop and a half under-exposed and was in my throw-away pile. Post processing seemed to work nicely.
I followed Diane’s recommendation for removing the dark area in the upper left and for Keith’s suggestions, I started off with some Lightroom adjustments to the histogram which pushed the midtones to the left and pulled the lights and darks to the max. I bumped up the saturation of yellows and oranges. In Photoshop, I tweaked a curve adjustments on midtones and tweaked a little up brightness just slightly. I finished the edits with bumping up microcontrast and small details in Topaz Adjust. Thank you…Jim
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Pertinent technical details or techniques: D500 200-400mm f4 (1/1250 sec at f10, ISO 800; 280mm) Levels, Topaz DeNoise AI, Shadows & Highlights, Brightness & Contrast. This bull was getting ready to bugle and was checking out the multitude of cows that were close by. I was strategically positioned behind a car which served as a blind…Jim
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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This is wonderful! I can’t see any clue that it had been underexposed. I wonder about pulling down the highlights more – there must be a lot of information in them from the original exposure. I’d suggest cloning or lightening the dark area in the UL – it pulls my eye away from the gorgeous animal.
Beautiful animal. Always great to get such a beauty in the viewfinder. I find the version you’ve posted to be overly bright. I saw your not that the original was a stop and a half under exposed. I think it was pushed too far. The Elk doesn’t look correct, and the surroundings are too bright. Here’s a version with adjustments that correct the issues I see.
Jim: beautiful bull elk which you caught looking at you. The corrections with the increased contrast , reduced exposure and increased saturation are a very worthwhile improvement. Richard
An excellent opportunity and a great capture, Jim! The re-post is a significant improvement with much greater texture, colors and details. I was surprised that you stated the original version was under exposed as it clearly looked over exposed to me. The revision is perfect!
