Mom (on the left) and the two kits. The kits are nearly fully grown, making it difficult to distinguish them from the adults. Looking closely at their faces, you might notice the two kits don’t look quite as mature. It won’t be long, probably within a month, before the family breaks up and goes their separate ways.
Any
Canon 60D, Canon 70-300mm IS USM Zoom, f/11, 1/500 sec., ISO 640. Processed in ACR for exposure and cropping. Topaz De-noise.
Must be fascinating to be able to watch them on a daily bases, Terry.
I’m really enjoying your series with this family. This shot in particular has such lovely light and posing with them spaced so nicely. It seems a little blue/magenta to me, especially in the shadows so I would tweak the color balance a bit there. Also, I’m not sure what I’m seeing at the base of the front left paw of the animal on the left. A cloning artifact? The foot isn’t quite planted, which it might not have been, but the rock looks odd as well. What a gorgeous group and I’m glad they continue to give you such great photo opportunities.
Thanks @linda_mellor. They are definitely a joy to have around.
Yikes @Kris_Smith! I really missed that! Thanks for catching. Yes, it is a cloning artifact that I didn’t notice. I’ve reworked it and hope it looks better. I don’t see the magenta, but is it still there in the rework?
No prob - that’s what we’re here for. Sometimes we look at a photo so much we can’t really “see” it anymore. I like the increased contrast in the rework, but feel it’s gone too far. The shadows are deep and navy blue instead of light blue. Have you tried a color correction first? If you have the TK8 panel in Photoshop, there are a couple of color cast actions that are useful and both can be adjusted to suit. The paw does look better.
Good you got down closer to eye level for these! Agree with the second one being too dark in the shadows. You might get a good color balance if you have an “auto” setting – sometimes that works if you have a good range of colors in an image.
The mother looks like she’s leaning well to the left – I wonder about some CW rotation?
You have a wonderful series of images from this location. You already have some good suggestions from @Kris_Smith & @Diane_Miller , I’m seeing the color casts in both the versions.
I was just wondering if the rock is tilted or the frame is ?
Okay @Kris_Smith @JRajput @Diane_Miller, I wasn’t trying to ignore you guys, just trying to get a fresh perspective after looking at this photo for so long. I wouldn’t spend so much time on it except I really like the pose of the foxes, and I had pretty good light (if a bit harsh), but that dark shadow in the URC is throwing everything off. I had originally tried an auto color correct as @Diane_Miller suggested, and that’s what you see in the original post. It isn’t terrible, but I think it threw a cast on the foxes when applied. And the repost is much too dark. After messing with it over and over, I finally decided to start over. My thought was to lift those shadows in the URC without affecting the foxes too much. They were already exposed just about right, except lifting the shadows on the two kits shoulders. I also cropped it down from the top a bit more to eliminate some of those shadows. As for the leaning, that’s just the way that rock runs. It isn’t anywhere near level. This is the best I can do, with my admittedly limited processing skills!
3rd Try
Much better! Dark shadows as those on the top can be corrected by painting on a Quick Mask and using the resulting selection to make a masked Levels or Curves (or whatever is needed for other situations) and fixing just that area. (I don’t know if PSE lets you do that, though.) The mask can be tweaked after the fact if needed with the brush tool.
As to the blue shadows, that is about the only blue in the image so you could try just lowering saturation on the blues/cyans. Maybe no masking needed.
A graduated dark vignette from the bottom would work well on the FG here.
I tried just adjusting the blues and the cyans, but it just wouldn’t produce the desired affect. I don’t know if I could mask the area and adjust it, or not. I’ll need to investigate that. Oh, well…much I need to learn - especially concerning processing. Btw, I did straighten it a bit per your suggestion, and it looks better.
Here’s your original post, with just a simple Hue-Sat adj layer, with the Blue slider pulled down by about 80%. That fixed the blue-cast shadows, no masking. Then I did a brushed-on quick mask at the top and used a Curve to lighten the top (Levels would have worked too) and a gradient at the bottom to darken the FG the same way.
Well deserved, Terry. Congrats!
