Yeah, I'm Lookin' At You Grizzly Series

[Ed_Williams]

Nah, That One Looks Plumper

Comin’ At You

Oooh, There’s Another One

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

This is a continuation of a series of this grizzly bear that I posted a little over a month back. It was a weird feeling to know that this bear was eyeballing me, and coming my way. I started backing away when it turned it’s attention on me. This bear had come running from the area near the Yellowstone NP Southeast Entrance Station, sniffed around a big shed and tried the locks on the door. The started pawing around an old wood pile before turning it’s attention on me as I had walked away from the cars a bit to try to get a good angle around some trees that were in the way. It noticed me, sniffed the air, took a few steps toward me and sniffed again, kind of studying me. Once I backed away, it started grazing as it paralleled the road along a nice grassy meadow. The crowd started gathering and following the bear along the roadway, so after about twenty minutes my wife and I decided to leave it in peace and moseyed on up the road.

Specific Feedback

Bright light, dark shadows. I hope I brought the shadows up enough to get some detail in the eyes without making it too bright. I reduced the highlights and the whites in the RAW file as I processed to reduce the shadows.

Technical Details

1. Canon R5, f10, 1/250s, iso400, 100-500+1.4tc, at 420mm, as small as I could go with the lens.
2. R5, f10, 1/250s, iso200, 420mm.
3. R5, f10, 1/250s, iso200, 420mm.
4. R5, f10, 1/250s, iso250, 420mm.

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• Vision and Purpose:
• Conceptual:
• Emotional Impact and Mood:
• Composition:
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• Technical:

[Barbara_Djordjevic]

Ed, the four pictures help tell the story. I like the eyes in the third shot. In the rest, the eyes are just brown holes. I challenged myself to try darkening the grass so that the bear stood out. I did it in Photoshop Elements 2018, which is the last elements program I used before PS. Here is the step-by-step process I followed
to get this piacture.

1. I duplicated the background and then used the spot healing tool to remove distracting light grasses in the background.

2. I then used the quick selection tool to select the bear and copied that selection to its own layer.

3. I then changed the blending mode of the background layer to multiply at 51% opacity to darken the grass.
   

4. The green seemed too intense so I used the hue/saturation adjustment layer to tone down the green
   

   

5. Finally I brightened the bear layer to 77% opacity in the normal blending mode.
   
   It was a challenge to figure out how to do it in Elements, but I came away respecting what the Elements program can do. I must say that I am spoiled because the newer PS programs would select the bear with out any effort on our part. I hope you don’t mind my playing with this great picture.

[Ed_Williams]

@Barbara_Djordjevic, thank you for working on this one for me. I was really struggling to get anything out of the eyes on this bear. Then when I lightened the shadows a lot in both RAW and jpeg, it made the whole image too bright. Your work shows it is possible to select and work on different parts of this to bring a better overall balance.