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Archive 2016 · Hurting

  
 
lighthound
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Hurting


Shot these and many other this morning.

I found this guy before the sun was fully up. He apparently lost a vicious battle and is limping hard favoring his front left leg. There seems to be a puncture and other wound on his left side as well.
Note his drooping left ear. This tells you something serious is wrong.

I'm hopeful he's going to make it as they are very resilient creatures, but you can clearly see the pain he is in.
There will be no more fighting for this guy this season.

And wait till you see what's left of the big boy I've been shooting. He's been kicking some serious Elk butt from the looks of it, and he's got all the girls now.

I'd like to hear what your picks would be (if any) out of this set as well as any crop or editing adjustment you might see that is needed.

Dave




1






2






3






4






5 Giving it his best pose




Oct 09, 2016 at 08:41 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Hurting


I'm sure that was an emotive experience to be so close ... and to see the anguish.


Oct 09, 2016 at 09:05 PM
ben egbert
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Hurting


1,2,3 in that order, but I love all of them. Super glad you escaped the hurricane.


Oct 09, 2016 at 09:12 PM
OregonSun
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Hurting


1 is my favorite for the prominent rack, depth, and subject isolation. The rest round out a great set. If they were mine I would clone out the dark stalk just to the right of the elk in 2, 3, 4 & 5.

Heron



Oct 10, 2016 at 12:49 AM
sbeme
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Hurting


These are very nice with processing providing a natural, realistic feel. And a beautiful setting. First appears to be focused more on his back than face. Maybe some extra sharpening of the head?

Scott



Oct 10, 2016 at 10:43 AM
lighthound
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Hurting


RustyBug wrote:
I'm sure that was an emotive experience to be so close ... and to see the anguish.


Yes, it was a little hard to see him like this. I wasn't sure at the time if my images would capture this very well but I stayed there and watched him after I was finished shooting. That's when it really hit home.

Dave
---------------------------------------------

ben egbert wrote:
1,2,3 in that order, but I love all of them. Super glad you escaped the hurricane.


Thanks for the picks Ben. I'm surprised that #1 is a favorite here. I thought #5 would have been because he's hiding the pain better in that shot. Just goes to show that my photography taste is out of wack still.

Driving up there yesterday morning I was shocked by the heavy winds we were still getting way over here. Almost blew me off the road a few times. I was actually thinking about turning around because I didn't think they would be out in the fields with such heavy winds. But, this was in a huge valley and closer to TN and there was zero wind by the time I got up there.

Dave

---------------------------------------------

OregonSun wrote:
1 is my favorite for the prominent rack, depth, and subject isolation. The rest round out a great set. If they were mine I would clone out the dark stalk just to the right of the elk in 2, 3, 4 & 5.

Heron



Thank you Heron and thanks for the pick. I'm glad you mentioned that dark stalk as I was going to clone it out but decided to keep it in there to see if anyone saw that as a distraction. You answered that question and I'll make it go away.




Viewing these on my crap monitor now and I'm seeing some grain/noise on them and some are looking a little soft. Anyone else seeing this?

Dave



Oct 10, 2016 at 10:59 AM
lighthound
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Hurting


sbeme wrote:
These are very nice with processing providing a natural, realistic feel. And a beautiful setting. First appears to be focused more on his back than face. Maybe some extra sharpening of the head?

Scott



Thanks Scott! I must have been typing when you commented. And that answers my question as for the softness I thought I was seeing. I didn't see this last night on my good monitor but after the downsizing and conversion to jpeg, I'm seeing some noise as well. The other thing that might be causing the softness issue is motion blur due to my slow SS. I tried to go as slow as possible to get my ISO down. In hindsight, I'm not sure if this helped any.

Dave



Oct 10, 2016 at 11:05 AM
sbeme
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Hurting


wondered about the motion too..



Oct 10, 2016 at 02:33 PM
Shasoc
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Hurting


This is a fine series, Dave. #4 is the image that shows best the suffering of this beautiful animal. May be the images are not sharp, but they are not OOF.
As far as processing goes I find the bg to be too bright which detracts from the subject. The viewer's eyes are always attracted by the brightest and sharpest area of the image. May be you can tone down the BG and brighten the subject more. I tried on the small file, but you can get better results working on the original file.
Socrate







Oct 10, 2016 at 10:38 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Hurting


Thanks Socrate. I hear you about the brightness and agree. However this is one of those fog type images that I struggle to figure out the best way to process them and still retain the fog. My normal processing always kills the fog, I was so focused on trying to keep as much of it as possible that I overlooked this. Is my thinking flawed in that the heavier (albeit brighter) BG fog helped isolate him better? To my eyes it did.

I'm not sure what caused the softness issue. I was using a tripod and had switched from AI Servo to single shot to eliminate the AF lock lag that I have read about being caused from using AI servo. And I was very conscious of waiting for the IS and AF to stabilize before I snapped. IDK, maybe it has something to do with my body @ ISO 1600.

I just wish I could get the type of images I see over in N&W all the time. It's got to be user error but I often think I need a better body or something. Maybe it's my lousy PP skills.

Dave



Oct 12, 2016 at 03:55 PM
Shasoc
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Hurting


Dave, fog can really impart some wonderful mood in photos. At the same time can make your photos look washed out, lowering contrast and saturation. The fact that fog refract/diffract light irregularly so as to diffuse in many directions tricks the camera's exposure meter system and makes hard to capture the scene we see. Fog also reduces the amount of light reflected by your subject, which require longer exposure which in turn creates more noise.
About the softness, which I really don't see in your photos, may be caused by some condensation on the surface of your lens or inside your camera.
In other words fog is not your friend when it comes to wildlife, unless you are shooting an environmental shot, in which case you should meter for the fog and possibly get a silhouette type out of the wildlife subject. PP can help some but it is not the solution.
Socrate



Oct 12, 2016 at 09:27 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Hurting


Thanks for the great info Socrate! I purposely went gentle on my processing for fear of over doing it on the contrast and saturation. I'll keep this in mind on other shots that have any fog in them.

Got a couple more different shots from that morning that I'm going to post up to get some feed back on.


Dave



Oct 12, 2016 at 09:56 PM
Shasoc
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Hurting


Dave, just for fun I tried to recreate a fog atmosphere in PS. I don't know exactly what you saw but this is what I came up with.
Reduce contrast, reduce saturation and clarity. Add some soft focus and some glow through a gradient filter. (More or less)
Socrate







Oct 13, 2016 at 11:18 AM
lighthound
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Hurting


Thank you! That is amazing work Socrate. It looks very real and exactly like heavy fog.
What I saw that morning wasn't heavy fog and looked very close to my OP where the fog was off in the distance about half way back in the field and got thicker near the wood line.

As you can tell from the FL on my exif, he was pretty close when I shot those which is why he wasn't melting into the thin fog.

Your adjustments will help me process a whitetail doe image I had long given up on that I shot a few months ago. It was an amazing sunrise shot in beautiful fog but I just couldn't figure out how to bring out the magic that saw. It was one of those "OMG! look at that" moments from behind the camera, but when I tried to process it I just couldn't get it to look right. You've given me new hope for that one now.

Dave




Oct 13, 2016 at 01:11 PM





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