Featherdale Wildlife Park

[biggerry]

man, it was hard picking just 4 pictures from this morning....

Thanks for organising the meet, we really enjoyed the morning out, I would have not otherwise been taking pictures!

Thankyou also for the BBQ!

Peter was definitely right, this is the place to go to get up close and personal with animals!

Anyway these are 4 that I feel encapsulated the experience for me, very very hard to pick just 4!!

I really need a floss, help me out pal....

[Catcha]

I quite like the 3rd shot very detailed of its skins tone hehehe

[stubbsy]

Gerald

Of these I prefer the last two, but generally I find these all a little too tightly cropped. The first one in particular could benefit from a little more space to emphasise the menace in those pointy teeth & powerful jaw and give a little better sense of scale.

The third image is a great capture given the extremely low light in the reptile pavilion and to me is the onbly image where the cropping strengthens the image.

[gstark]

I'm going to agree with Peter on the first, but go a different way on the second.

The first loses something because it's too tightly cropped. There is no, as Peter suggests, sense of scale, and the DoF here is muddied around the top of the head where we lose clarity of where the head ends and the body lies. And while I like the direct, head on angle that you've taken, I again think that this creates an issue with a lack of delineation of where the head ends.


In the second, I think I might like to see a tighter crop, protait mode, and some vignetting applied to help to try to isolate Skippy's head. The problem we are facing here is the strong side-lighting though, which has thrown half of the animal into the dark (is this the new premier of NSW?) and that creates an issue of dynamic range and contrast.

We probably need a bit of dodging on the face to lighten up the shadowed side, along with some burning to darken (slightly) the illuminated side, and then come back to the cropping and vignetting that I suggested. The cropping should also remove the Johnnie Howard (aka unwanted intrusion) from the right foreground of this image.

[biggerry]

firstly, thanks for the feedback, thats the kind of constructive feedback I enjoy.

I quite like the 3rd shot very detailed of its skins tone

ta, its actually part of what i was trying to do, i think...also trying to get some patterns there as well... this one was at iso1000 so i was pretty happy with it.

I find these all a little too tightly cropped.

I had the idea I wanted to be as up close and personal as I could get since most of my animals shots struggle to get the reach, I did not PP crop any of my pictures so I really should have shuffled my feet (or stepped away from teh glass!) a bit more on the day to get some more angle

it's too tightly cropped

sense of scale, and the DoF here is muddied

point taken..

lack of delineation

I now know what that means

dodging on the face to lighten up the shadowed side, along with some burning to darken (slightly) the illuminated side, and then come back to the cropping and vignetting that I suggested

I agree that emu's ass is not really helping this picture , now about bringing out some light on the dark side, I have have since tried that but really struggled to get a decent amount of detail back. I have not lost any shadow detail (according to NX) so I find that a bit surprising. Cropping I can do, and it definitely removes johnnie but not sure about how to add some vignetting - let me read up on this and I will have aother crack.....

again, thanks for the feedback....

[biggerry]

I kinda think I made it worse, but I gave it a go....