Todays Work: Mt. Goat - Full Bodied.

D'Buggs · August 12, 2010

Typical drill - I'd like to hear some feedback.

- 1 light on BG
- 1 light on subject
- Nifty-Fifty @ 2.8
- D300 @ 1/200th

Image from reshoot in post #4

Thanks for peeking. :wink

rwells · August 12, 2010

I'll take a crack at it;

It took me a while to study this image to determine what didn't look right (to me)

The front of this white animal, and foreground, is too bright
The light on the animal is coming from camera right ~ the bg light is brighter camera left. This looks very unnatural to my eye
I know this is your preference, and that's OK, but just as in people shots, I don't care for the far eye being exposed to the bg, or in this case, the animals body... In other words, include a little more of the camera right side of the animals face, this would solve the eye issue
The bottom of the bg (camera left) has some strange colors there. I'm seeing some kind of muted brown/orange and a band of muted green. (might be my calibration, but it's definitely not white)

Not picking on your excellent work, but you did ask, and this shot IMHO is not at the level of your other shots.

Of course, YMMV

D'Buggs · August 13, 2010

Randy; sumthin's up with your monitor.... That portion of BG fades/grads off from tones of gray ---> almost d e a d black - There's NO colors there except for my watermark on the very bottom. I've seen this image on 2 machines now (1 good, 1 crap) and I get zippy of what your seeing.

I'd like to say more but it's sleepy time for Bonzo.... zzzzzzzz
Tomorrow...

D'Buggs · August 13, 2010

OK,,,,, A fresh day, new eyes,,,,,,,,, and one HELL of a crappy pic. :cry
Sorry for the torturous event - It's gone!

Most of its trouble was with me getting too happy on digging out contrast - WAAAAY over-board but I still didn't see the funky colours.
The BG light was set as such, just to be different. I'm not married to it though...
The tonal levels of the face/lower legs is greatly due to that the animal was *just* coming into its winter coat; These parts are nearly smooooth but my 'happiness' on the knobs, didn't help it in the slightest bit (bad, BAD photog'er)

The eye thang;
There's a TON of craftsmanship that goes into building them and because all of the 'prey animals' have eyes that aren't set fully forward (like humans and predators [dogs/cats]), a straight on shot misses out on a lot of this detail. WTS, though, the project is HUGE and we will be (are) tossing it up a bit in regards to facial profiles with different mounts - But don't let this discourage from critiquing what we have on an image presented. If it needs help, I wanna HEAR it!

I still can't believe I posted that pic...

I'm posting the result of my re-shoot. I changed the BG light, slightly adjusted my main, and pulled out the brushes to even up the tonals of the 'bad' bits. I'll also start posting shots larger than previously - On some boards, we're restricted to 650 on the long side. Hopefully it'll load correctly...

ReDo;

rwells · August 13, 2010

OK, I re-calibrated my monitor

What I'm seeing here is a dern near fantastic image (in my eyes). My only nit now is the bg camera right/top is too bright. It forces my eye to go there instead of the animal.

The bg on the left/rear of the animal averages about 217, and on the right about 247. I messed with a copy in PS to see, and to my eye, if you burn the camera right bg down a little, to maybe ave. 220~230, it would be perfect.

Of course, take all my input with a half-grain of salt. It's your image

Now, with that out of the way... VERY nice work here

BTW, tell the taxidermist that he has a fan down here in Texas!

D'Buggs · August 13, 2010

rwells wrote: »

BTW, tell the taxidermist that he has a fan down here in Texas!

Thanks Randy, I'll pass it on.

If I were to put the BG light behind the goat, all would be good; I was just wanting 'different' this time 'round and I didn't realize how EASY it was to blow-out black seamless. Live-n-learn.

I'll mess w/ it some more.

I think the rock base might need some more attention too...

Who knows; maybe we'll look at it tomorrow and go, EWE!!!

You crit was superb!
Super-Uber Thanks.

D'Buggs · August 14, 2010

Randy, I owe ya a beer or perhaps a bottle of fine whisky. - I just pow-wow'd with the client and he's in LOVE w/ the image.

I took your [further] advice and knocked down the upper corner (230 seemed to work fine). I also tweeked the base and did some HC sharpening.
The 'net result' is in my ReDo post from earlier.

Thanks again - You saved me from some egg slime in the face.

rwells · August 14, 2010

D'Buggs wrote: »

Randy, I owe ya a beer or perhaps a bottle of fine whisky. - I just pow-wow'd with the client and he's in LOVE w/ the image.

I took your [further] advice and knocked down the upper corner (230 seemed to work fine). I also tweeked the base and did some HC sharpening.
The 'net result' is in my ReDo post from earlier.

Thanks again - You saved me from some egg slime in the face.

Hey man,

Your doing all the work, and mighty fine work at that ~

I can clearly see why he would love the image, it's Excellent

Todays Work: Mt. Goat - Full Bodied.

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