EDIT: by request, added a couple more shots (5 and 6)

I got to spend an hour shooting with a wolf pack earlier today. It was a lot of fun. This was also the autofocus trial for my new Mark III, so I was shooting wide open or close to it most of the time. The lighting started off decent but quickly faded to typical late fall/early winter gray skies. But hey, I still managed a few decent shots

I still have a bunch of shots to process, but I have been at the computer too long and they are all starting to look the same, so I decided to post a few and then take a break!

Thanks for looking,
Brandon

1.

Hi Brandon,

My favorite is #3. A question about highlights, on my monitor I see many hot spots, is it like that on the original full resolution file?

Garen

Nice images! What kind of gear were the wolves shooting with?


j/k

+1 for #3. really a great pose.

good looking canines. I am guessing that you were at a rescue habitat or something similar in order to be so close.

@GAREN: None of the images have any blown highlights in the original Lightroom-processed RAW or in the jpegs I exported to Flickr and linked here. I guess maybe some of the highlights look a little hot looking at them here on my (calibrated) monitor, but I don't find what I am seeing objectionable. Anyone else? Do the pics not look right in that respect?

@Jeffrey: Thanks!

Genes Home wrote:
+1 for #3. really a great pose.

good looking canines. I am guessing that you were at a rescue habitat or something similar in order to be so close.

Thanks. It was a local (NE Ohio) place called Wolf Timbers. It's a small place but the people were great, and I enjoyed getting in the enclosure with the wolves.

Hi Brandon....wolves are the most beautiful creatures and you have some good images.
Esp like #3, the wolf seems very relaxed, but alert.

I think Garen is referring to highlights without detail....hot, but not blown.
RAW can usually pull out about 2 stops and there is some detail there.
Even in the low res jpg as shown along left side of face..

hth in some way......would like to see more wolves posted if you have them

HI Brandon,

I'm in the #3 camp, too. Something special about that one that places it above the rest. Not the rest aren't great shots, because they are.

Ken

Dave In La wrote:
Hi Brandon....wolves are the most beautiful creatures and you have some good images.
Esp like #3, the wolf seems very relaxed, but alert.

I think Garen is referring to highlights without detail....hot, but not blown.
RAW can usually pull out about 2 stops and there is some detail there.
Even in the low res jpg as shown along left side of face..

hth in some way......would like to see more wolves posted if you have them


Thanks for the comment, Dave. I am a "computer guy" and am very familiar with processing techniques and what you can do with a RAW file. I was mostly just asking back if they looked too hot to other people on here in case my monitor wasn't showing an accurate white point.

I personally prefer the slight loss of overall detail to maintain overall contrast. If you do too much to recover the highlights the compression of that part of the histogram makes the image look flatter, in my opinion, because there are a lot of midtones in these particular images that also need to be preserved.

Anyhow, I am all about compromising, so I have brought the highlights down a little bit more on the last couple I have processed.

EDIT: ok, after the feedback I went back and touched up the first batch of photos with proper local highlights edits. I think I was just too lazy to do the local editing yesterday, and the results from the easier global edits didn't look very good to me.

Thanks for the feedback.