Edinburgh Zoo: Chimp

[Junk Food Monkey]

A chimp from Edinburgh Zoo - I prefer this black and white as it brings out the detail in the face, but think it is a bit soft in the arms and wish I'd managed to get the eyes a bit lighter.

This fella was about to start a fight.

Original is 1691 x 2537

Canon 60D, EF 70-200 f/4L USM, f/4 @ 200mm, 1/500, ISO-400


cc by Junk Food Monkey, on Flickr

[Junk Food Monkey]

And who he had the fight with - I think I over sharpened this one, and perhaps made it a bit bright to bring out the detail in the face.

Original is 3467 x 2311

Canon 60D, EF 70-200 f/4L USM, f/5.6 @ 180mm, 1/500, ISO-400


tt3 by Junk Food Monkey, on Flickr

[davidedric]

it is a bit soft in the arms

I think the b&w conversion is a good thought. I wonder what the shutter speed was? There is no EXIF available, but it looks to me like motion blur rather than depth of focus.

I like the second image too. For me, it brings out the energy, and if that means going a bit over the top in pp, then good if that's what it takes to get over what you want to show. Good composition, too.

Dave

[Brownbear]

I love the 2nd shot, great capture... I prefer the colour version.

[dje]

Both good shots Stuart in their own way. I don't think you've over brightened the chimp's face in the second but I would consider applying a decreasing brightness gradient to the right hand side of the image to make the foliage less prominent.

Dave

[splashy]

Nr 2 is very good and shows the tension of the muscles.

[Ken Curtis]

Hi Stuart.

I downloaded your 2nd image and opened it in Camera Raw. It was fairly easy to bring up the shadows (to see detail on the chimp) and decrease the highlights (to reduce background brightness).

[FlyingSquirrel]

Welcome, Stuart. Personally, I love the first shot. I think what you have done is very nice; black and white was an excellent decision. In my opinion, I think there are some more things that could be done in post-processing with that image. However, I am only thinking about what I would personally do with the photo, and cannot judge your own vision for the image. I'd probably increase contrast and sharpness in various localized areas, open up the shadows on the face and eyes, and add an uneven vignette. Thanks for sharing your photos and I look forward to more of your posts!

edit- I've just downloaded the first photo and had a quick play with it in photoshop. If you'd care to see my version, let me know and I can send it your way.

[Junk Food Monkey]

There is no EXIF available, but it looks to me like motion blur rather than depth of focus.

Yeah I think that it is motion blur. I though 1/500 would be fast enough and I'm perhaps too reluctant to increase the ISO at times.

I've just downloaded the first photo and had a quick play with it in photoshop. If you'd care to see my version, let me know and I can send it your way.

I'd be the first to admit that my post-processing skills are weak, so I'm more than happy to see what other people can do - especially if you can give me some pointers on what you did.

[davidedric]

Yeah I think that it is motion blur. I though 1/500 would be fast enough and I'm perhaps too reluctant to increase the ISO at times

Yes, I think that 400 is pretty conservative with your camera. You could easily double it, and I doubt 1600 would cause too much trouble. I think the thing is that some noise can be managed in pp (and usually won't show anyway on a web page), but there's nothing anyone can do about motion blur.

I don't know what pp Ken did, and it all depends on what software you use. This is a very quick edit in Lightroom (so not presented as an example of the pp'ers art!)

I lowered the overall exposure by about half a stop to reduce the brightness in the grass, then brought up the shadows slider till I got as much detail as I could and things still looked natural. I also brought up the blacks a wee bit. I also added a little Clarity (which is basically local contrast enhancement) and some Vibrance (a kind of intelligent saturation), and finally a bit of sharpening. If this doesn't make sense (it is Lightroom speak) then do ask.

A final thought, if you shot in RAW, you can usually get more from the image than we can with the jpeg and reduced size

Dave

[FlyingSquirrel]

Stuart, here is my quick version of the first photograph. If you'd like me to remove it, send me PM and I'll do so as soon as I can. As you can see I went a bit extreme on some of the processing and contrast; I know there are people who will think I went too far with it. Anyway, this is what I would do if it were my photo.

The exposure on the grass was blown so there wasn't much I could do with it; given a RAW file and more time, I could probably have done better. Anyway, you'll get the idea what I am going for.

Basically I went into photoshop and created a duplicate layer. Then I did some various passes with unsharp mask filter, from small radius, high amount, upward to bigger radius and lower amount. I did this till it looked overdone, then I lowered the opacity of the layer with luminosity blend mode until it looked about right to me. This created the sharpness and more punchy contrast. Then I did some more contrast adjustments with some curves adjustment layers, and I used masks to show and hide the various contrast amounts in different areas. I used one with a higher exposure to bring out the facial detail. After all of this sharpening and curves with masks to my liking, I then "painted" in an uneven vignette around the edges just to lower the effect of the overexposed grass and bring focus inward. Oh, and I also slightly blurred the background and foreground grass as well with the lens blur tool and masked it in lightly.

So that was my approach, it was kinda quick and dirty, but I wanted to show how you can modify the exposure, contrast, and sharpness selectively to specific areas, which allows you to do things like bring the face out of shadows, change the viewers focus, etc. With a RAW file I could have pulled more highlight and shadow detail... Hope this helps and you don't feel I have done your photo any injustice. Oh one more thought, if this were in color I would probably have pulled back on the contrast and sharpness a little- I tend to process black and white photos with more punch. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions about anything I did, and again, I can remove it if I have gone too far. Thanks

Matt

[NorthernFocus]

Both are awesome shots. I'm not a B/W fan but this one works. Nicely done.

[Junk Food Monkey]

Thanks to all for the comments, and especially Matt and Dave for the advice with post-processing. I think your efforts have convinced me I need to spend more time on developing my post processing skills (although I should probably invest in a new computer and version of Photoshop - I only have Photoshop 6 from the late '90's).

I also have both images in RAW format (and the B/W was originally colour).