Elephant B&W

[Neilmac50]

I have re-edited this recent shot taken over the festive period into a B&W as I think it shows the elephants skin textures better,taken at the Pilanesberg national park north of Johannesburg.Nikon D3s Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8. Neil

[Stagecoach]

Neil,

The B&W treatment has certainly worked well to show that skin texture to advantage. I just wonder if a very very small increase in contrast would help?

Grahame

[Donald]

Definitely a scene made for the B & W treatment. Well done, Neil.

If you follow the line up from the tip of the trunk, there's a small highlight/bright spot. Is that a bit too distracting and a candidate for cloning?

Have you looked at Nick Brandt's work?

[pnodrog]

The elephant has a great stance and looks ready to run up and be patted by a friendly photographer. I agree a bit with Grahame but I think a bit more punch would be best added by dragging down the shadow area with a curves adjustment. A bit of vignetting darkening around the edges may also help but I never like it if it becomes to obvious.

[dabhand]

Smashing image - I agree with the above comments - but I'll leave the patting to the more adventurous

[deetheturk]

Great image Neil,i also agree with the above comments,but a wonderful image none the less,well done!

[Neilmac50]

Thank you for all your constructive comments,well spotted Donald I was so absorbed in getting the skin texture how I wanted it I never spotted that bright spot in the background,I have also increased the contrast as suggested and can see an improvement,cheers.Neil

[Donald]

I have also increased the contrast

That does indeed make a big difference. It's looking good.

[Mike Buckley]

Neil,

I like the potential of the color version of this photo in your other thread so much that I hope you don't mind that I gave a monochrome version a go for myself. (Don't hesitate to ask me to remove my version if you prefer.) I did so for reasons explained below.

Despite the huge improvement in your second monochrome version, I felt that it could benefit from yet more contrast (you might prefer less) mostly but not entirely to enhance the wonderful texture of the elephant's skin that you displayed so nicely in the color version. My software allows me to convert using any color in the spectrum and I used one of the shades of green that is fairly close to the yellow part of the spectrum. I also adjusted the curve slightly but I think the bigger difference between your and my version has to do with the color of the filter that I used to convert to monochrome.

I also wanted to show you the results of taking the time (only five minutes for me) to remove the foreground branches and growth that were highly out of focus. The elephant and its pose are so magnificent that it just seemed worth taking that time to eliminate the distracting foreground elements. Like you, I went on safari recently for the first time and I completely understand that you simply can't always avoid capturing those kinds of distracting elements.

Last, I used a vignette that is so slight that you probably wouldn't notice it unless I removed it to provide a basis of comparison. I like using that technique not to highlight the subject as much as to increase the three-dimensional character of the photo.

[pnodrog]

Mike I like how you have tidied up the edges and annoying twigs etc but I slightly prefer the tonal range of Neil's second edit. Just goes to prove no body is perfect....(Natural I exclude myself from that comment) They are both significant improvements on the first version.

[Mike Buckley]

That's understandable, L. Paul. The two styles are very different and both are viable.

[Neilmac50]

Thank you all for taking the time to comment and especially Mike for his version of my photo,could you tell me how you diffused the branches in the foreground as this is a photo I want to have printed on canvas?

[Mike Buckley]

Neil,

Your image deserves to be printed. Glad to know that you plan to do that!

I didn't "diffuse" the foreground branches. I selected them and then selected other areas of the image to replace them. That's called "cloning." I did this in Lightroom 5. Its cloning tool is far more advanced than the same tool in Lightroom 4. Most any software (except my primary editing software, which is Nikon Capture NX2) has a cloning tool that will make this a fairly easy task once you get used to doing it.

[Neilmac50]

Thanks for your quick reply Mike,I've had a go at using the cloning tool in Lightroom and its proved surprisingly successful,used it before for small blemishes but didn't think it would work in this case.I intend on using a local lab to print the image onto canvas around A1 size.Cheers, Neil

[jcuknz]

My guide in these situations is to look at the curves-tool histogram and with your photo I found an appreciable amount of the base line not covered ... adjusting the line to match the ends of the used portion resulted in a bit lighter version of what Mike did ... this adds contrast and the darker tone. Moving the left side in makes it darker and the right hand side lightens it with the contrast coming from the steeper line.