Please tear her apart.

[buglinbilly]

I have been taking antelope photos for 4 or 5 years now. I am good at getting close, as I have bow hunted for over 50 years. But I am really new to this DSLR stuff. I am old with bad eyes but really eager to learn and do better, so please let me know what I could have done better to improve and have made the following photo better.

Thanks and have a good one. BB

[Anbesol]

Very well done, the metering was spot on, foxus placement, detail, everything well executed and considered. Beautiful photo, I dont have any ideas for improvement.. Is this on your 90-250?

[Overbeyond]

Excellent photograph..
I hope you were not killing them with your bow.

[OldClicker]

I think that it is an excellent shot of her in her environment. From a purely image or portrait standpoint, you could find a way to see into her eyes (I have no idea how, but the eyes are soooo important) and you could try a much more shallow DoF to blur the background and make it just about her. - Terry

[CLKunst]

"Please tear her apart."

Not with eyelashes like that I'm not! This is beautiful!! Love it! And you've done such a good job with the technical aspects too. Fill flash, background to sky balance, composition, excellent exposure for what looks like just past noon sun! Wow! What's not to like about this? I think I'm in love with those eyes. . . if I could do a proper wolf whistle I would.

[gahspidy]

Its a beautiful shot. Your ability to get in close has paid off here. The sharpness and exposure is great. The eye contact is wonderful, and your model direction is very good ;)

This is very good. Not much to improve upon with gere.

[NKP68]

Striking! Beautiful! Any comment here would just be redundant.
Great image.
Ed

[AgingEyes]

With this pose, I would like to see antelope cropped tighter/zoomed in more or you walked closer to take the shot. It looked like the sun was high up in the sky. Perhaps that makes the eyes look like two black holes as they were in the shadow. Ideally, it would be better to see some highlight in the eyes. For that you may have to use flash though. This could open up some of the darker areas in the eyes, too. Usually under bright sunlight, the colors don't look that saturate (like what you have). Don't know if you do post-processing though otherwise you could play around with the color saturation a bit. Personally, if I could only do one thing, I would definitely crop it tighter. At least I would crop some from the left. If I want to include the surrounding in the picture, I would wait until I could shoot the antelope more from the side.

So there, hope I have torn her apart

[LeeIs]

overall a great photograph! well done.

[buglinbilly]

Thanks to all who have commented.

When it comes to photography I am truly a beginner. I felt this was as good of antelope photo as I have ever taken, but I know it hard to critique your own work, thus I asked for others help. On this same forum some months ago, I placed another antelope photo I thought was pretty good and I got some very good suggestions, of which I have tried hard to employ in my thoughts and my actions.

I can say with antelope that you just can't walk up on them. They are extremely very spooky critters and accept no movement, so getting closer was not a choice and won't be a choice in the future. Using a flash at 20 plus yards is also not an option. So with those knowns, I tried my best and just want to learn what I can do better on my next outing.

I would be delighted if anyone wanted to crop, enhance, etc. any image I post. I am here to learn and to listen. Like I say I am just a basic student of photography and desire to be able to take some great photos. I have many skills with critters that most photographers don't have, like the ability to get close and to understand the critters I photograph, as I have been around and learning that part all my life as a bowhunter of over 50 years. I know good waterholes and go through all the work to set up good blinds, a thing very few will do, but now I need to learn photography skills and thus I ask for your help and I listen very closely to what is said.

I shoot most of these shots at around 20 yards or so, and doing that with my DSLR gives me but one chance to get it right. Once I take one photo, the noise made by the camera scares the antelope and then I have to wait until a new antelope comes within photo range. I can take 80 yard photos without alerting them, but once they get within about 50 yards, then the shutter and mirror noise scares them, so I wait until the get pretty close before I try to take their photo.

Again thanks to each and every one of you. I sure appreciate your help and I listen to your suggestions and if I feel they will work I will give them a try.

Please feel free to edit any of my photos and repost so I and others can your ideas and thoughts.

Again thanks to all. BB


Here yet another photo I took on that same trip. Feel free to make any suggestions or redo it and post what you feel would make the photo better. Thanks again. BB

[pthortron]

I love both of those shots. Being from antelope country myself I really appreciate the patience it takes to get that close.

[Greg McCary]

Print them large. Great work...

[AgingEyes]

Please feel free to edit any of my photos and repost so I and others can your ideas and thoughts.

Obviously, I like the second one better . I wonder if you have noticed, the color balance of the first one and the second one is not the same. The second shot has a warmer tone. Could it be because of different days, different time of the day?

Anyhow, the biggest problem I have with it though is the head area. I think it's kind of dark. So, here's my first edit:



I also have worked on bringing back some details in the white hair areas. I checked and noticed that the red channel is blown but the other two are not. That means there're still details that can be recovered in post-processing. The other thing is the eyes. There's a highlight in its left eye and so I enhanced it (with Levels) to make it more noticeable.


Here's my second edit:



This is a follow-up to the first edit above. Basically, I used tonal-contrast in Nik's Color Efex Pro to enhance the contrast of different areas of the antelope. This usually brings out more details and adds pop to a photo. That plug-in also added some saturation to the color, too. Then I also did some modelling with dodge and burn, trying my best to add some depth to the antelope.

So, what I've done was to make the final image looks better (at least to me ) Your mileage may differ. But, it all started with a very good base image of yours.

[Anbesol]

I like AE's edit of the face. But, I think the sharpness is beginning to borderline surreal in the second edit. Again, great work.

[buglinbilly]

Let's see what some of you would do with this photo.



I can see post processing is a whole new venture I have to learn.

Thanks again, BB

[AgingEyes]

[QUOTE=buglinbilly;474538
I can see post processing is a whole new venture I have to learn.
[/QUOTE]

Pressing down the shutter button is only the beginning. Then it's up to either the camera or you to process the raw file. The raw file is equivalent to the negative in film days. Post-processing is equivalent to the the work done in the darkroom. If you shoot jpeg, the computer in your camera processes the raw file for you (using the settings you selected through the camera manual). If you shoot raw, then you process the raw file yourself on your computer.

[buglinbilly]

I shot those photos in both raw and jpeg. So I do have the raw files. Being I shoot an Olympus E-5 camera, can you process a raw Olympus file in Lightroom 2.0. I do have that program but can't seem to get it to work with the raw Olympus files. Olympus has a program, but I really don't think its that great, so I just use Photoshop 6.0 on the jpeg images as it won't do the Olympus raw either.

Again thanks to all for you great help and suggestions. They are very much appreicated.

Have a good one. BB

[OldClicker]

I shot those photos in both raw and jpeg. So I do have the raw files. Being I shoot an Olympus E-5 camera, can you process a raw Olympus file in Lightroom 2.0. I do have that program but can't seem to get it to work with the raw Olympus files. Olympus has a program, but I really don't think its that great, so I just use Photoshop 6.0 on the jpeg images as it won't do the Olympus raw either.

Again thanks to all for you great help and suggestions. They are very much appreicated.

Have a good one. BB

For the E5 you would need LR3 or PS CS5. - Terry

[Anbesol]

CS4 updates to a current ACR as well... if that matters

[OldClicker]

CS4 updates to a current ACR as well... if that matters

I'm quite sure that all the ACR v6.x require CS5.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...jsp?ftpID=4917

Terry