Bath time ... repost from Critique section

[Jaedon]

Since I didnt get any one commenting on this image I thought I'd bring it over here and see what you guys think. Is there anything I could've done to make this image better?

I did a reverse s curve on it to bring out the details in the shadows on the momma elephant's front left leg and cropped in a bit tighter than I shot to remove the excess back of the papa elephant in teh BG. Should I have tried to clone ou tthe papa?

I took about 15-18 shots of this playful bunch but this is the one I liked the most.

[Loupey]

Definitely a wonderful moment there!

As for your question about removing papa - I wouldn't - from both a philosophical standpoint of changing that much of the image as well as from a technical standpoint since I'm not skilled enough to make something on that scale look "natural".

It's hindsight now but assuming that papa never moved from his position, I would have shot from straight-on to momma. True you may not have captured baby #2 at the rear, but you may have gotten a wonderful profile of baby #1 looking up at momma (even if it is only her head). Now just imagine if momma turned her head only slightly towards baby #1...

[Jaedon]

Maybe a bit more like this Loupey? (although having another elephant growing out of her butt kinda distracted me)



They were all swimming around and enjoying their time in the man made lake that it just for them. There was one out swimming in the middle of the lake too. The water apparantly is about 30 feet deep i the middle and I never knew that Elephants were such good swimmers.

[Loupey]

although having another elephant growing out of her butt kinda distracted me

That sounds like a great quote to put in your signature line

You have a great image there! Crop down (vertical or square) to get a tight momma head with baby. Eliminate baby #2 and all the water to both sides.

[Jaedon]

Ok cropped in tighter and added a touch more saturation to bring back the color I lost with the curve.

[Loupey]

Definitely stronger. But the head growing out the butt is still a problem. I'll play around with it a bit tomorrow afternoon and let you know if I come up with something (I have an idea). Will be out of town tomorrow morning.

[Loupey]

OK I have two alternate versions for you. Let me know if it is OK by you to post them here.

[Jaedon]

Sure Loupey give'r a go . I'm still playing with the originals and I have the raw files too. I'm not sure how hard it would be to remove one elephant form the butt of another =P

[Loupey]

OK so here's the first version.

Since the story here is about the mother and her baby and the background is distracting, I chose to do a heavy crop to eliminate all else (including much of momma). Cutting off so much is typically bad but the resulting image has nice shapes, textures, and shadows IMO.

This edit is not to everyone's liking I'm sure. But like I said, you have a good story in there. Exactly how to bring it out is the tough part.

[Loupey]

And here's the second one. An even more "controversial" crop

I don't know if I myself like this version. But I took advantage of the fact that momma's head is directly square with your camera angle by cropping her head right down the middle. I've never used the skew/distort commands with nature shots, but I just could not get the baby's trunk within the crop without it. Ethics about altering the image that much is a problem for me. But then, this image is not so much about documentation than it is about the feeling.

Does this project momma's connection to the baby? Like a piece of her is missing but found in the baby?

Definitely different. Perhaps not better but an illustration to show how one scene can be rendered differently to give different impressions. I personally like to explore these differences in-camera; but post processing gives us a second chance.

Hope that helps. Fun project for me - thanks!


btw - this image is great fun to convert to B&W then to apply various texturing/stylizing filters. I'll leave that up to you to discover

[Jaedon]

Thanx Loupey. I actually like the last version the best. When I looked at the first version I thought hmm....well the weird growth has been removed.... looks ok. Then I saw the second one....Regardless of the controversy =)

I think I could achieve the same crop from the opriginal without th emeed of skewing the image. I'll play with it a bit more and see what I come up with.

Thank you for the suggestions.