Zoo Shots

These are some of the first shots I took with my new T3i. Still learning the ropes.

Great job with the snakes. Exposure seems dead on and colors are fantastic! Mongoose picture is nice as well. I would have placed the little guy(or gal) on the right side of the frame. As the left side is uninteresting to me.

The photo of the girl seems like a snapshot rather than a portrait. The window distracts the flow of the image as well as the window frame which is not vertical. Watch your verticals
As you said the white balance is off. From the catchlights in her eyes I can see that there are three (probably tungsten) lights behind her. Not flattering light! Remember the larger the light the softer the light. I'm guessing these were not large lights. Also remember the closer the light the softer the light.
Next time turn her around and take advantage of that wonderful window light. It's a like a giant natural softbox that will make sure subjects look so much better. You could use the tungsten lights as a nice rim light instead.
Careful with the softening. Make sure not to go over lines or anything else that shouldn't be soft, like eyes, hair, eyebrows, eyelashes etc.

Hope this helps and thanks for sharing! If you're serious about critiques upload only one image at time so we can focus on just that one. You'll get better feedback that way!


Keep shooting!

Nackattack wrote in post #13852426
Great job with the snakes. Exposure seems dead on and colors are fantastic! Mongoose picture is nice as well. I would have placed the little guy(or gal) on the right side of the frame. As the left side is uninteresting to me.

The photo of the girl seems like a snapshot rather than a portrait. The window distracts the flow of the image as well as the window frame which is not vertical. Watch your verticals
As you said the white balance is off. From the catchlights in her eyes I can see that there are three (probably tungsten) lights behind her. Not flattering light! Remember the larger the light the softer the light. I'm guessing these were not large lights. Also remember the closer the light the softer the light.
Next time turn her around and take advantage of that wonderful window light. It's a like a giant natural softbox that will make sure subjects look so much better. You could use the tungsten lights as a nice rim light instead.
Careful with the softening. Make sure not to go over lines or anything else that shouldn't be soft, like eyes, hair, eyebrows, eyelashes etc.

Hope this helps and thanks for sharing! If you're serious about critiques upload only one image at time so we can focus on just that one. You'll get better feedback that way!


Keep shooting!

Very constructive comments. Thanks a lot and I'll definitely limit the shots per post and get the data in on future posts.

The snakes (pythons?) look a little dark to me so I brightened & held back on the right one, then sharpened 100% 1px.
Girl's face looks over processed or she has really smooth skin.

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Qbx wrote in post #13853711
The snakes (pythons?) look a little dark to me so I brightened & held back on the right one, then sharpened 100% 1px.
Girl's face looks over processed or she has really smooth skin.

The pythons were in the serpent house behind glass under subdued lighting. I used LR3 to brighten to correct the WB as much I as I felt comfortable with.

I knew I would take a hit on her photo. She is a typical teenager with typical teenage skin complexion. I was going with "flattering" more than accuracy.

If you post the original of the lovely teen I'm sure you will get some good advice and various takes on it.

Nice job on the snakes. The meerkat suffers from strong side-lighting, which puts 3/4 of the face in shadow. Either using fill flash or moving your shooting position to the left would have helped. Also, since there is a favored side, move the critter off center so that it's looking into the frame. You don't need all that space on the right. Your reds are clipped in the female homo sapiens. Try desaturating a little to get rid of the reddish blooms on the forehead, nose, and hair. It's good shot nonetheless, as these can be dangerous under some circumstances if one gets too close. Kudos on getting the artificial constructs (e.g. bars and fencing) out of the shots (except for the human) so that the critters don't look imprisoned.

I like the edit Qbx did on the snakes, and the shot is really cool!

Hi Gopher, there is so gold in there!

pythons - my favourite, the colour balance + exposure is good and its amazingly you got both snakes to play nice with their placement. If you wanted some easy fill flash underneath, try taking the photo upside down with the on camera flash filling out the space below rather than above. Depends on a lot of factors and others can say it rarely looks good - but keep it in your bag of tricks! Also if this was through glass then it wouldn't work at all.

the 2nd pic - it's got potential, i have a thing about body parts being cut out of the image when you're taking a full body shot of an animal or a human (cropping in pp is fine, id rather just have the option to crop the tail afterwards than lose it forever!). the subject is sharp in focus, but l'd reframe it with more space on the side that it is looking into, or find something else that adds to the pic (background, another critter interacting etc). or crop it as portrait rather than landscape...

the girl - yep, there are better ways to smooth things out.

btw Qbx sharpening seems overdone - when it messes with the OOF background i notice it straight away.

thefracas wrote in post #13860825
Hi Gopher, there is so gold in there!

pythons - my favourite, the colour balance + exposure is good and its amazingly you got both snakes to play nice with their placement. If you wanted some easy fill flash underneath, try taking the photo upside down with the on camera flash filling out the space below rather than above. Depends on a lot of factors and others can say it rarely looks good - but keep it in your bag of tricks! Also if this was through glass then it wouldn't work at all.

the 2nd pic - it's got potential, i have a thing about body parts being cut out of the image when you're taking a full body shot of an animal or a human (cropping in pp is fine, id rather just have the option to crop the tail afterwards than lose it forever!). the subject is sharp in focus, but l'd reframe it with more space on the side that it is looking into, or find something else that adds to the pic (background, another critter interacting etc). or crop it as portrait rather than landscape...

the girl - yep, there are better ways to smooth things out.

btw Qbx sharpening seems overdone - when it messes with the OOF background i notice it straight away.

Fracas - thanks for the recommendations.

The snakes were behind glass so I think any attempt to use a flash would caused havoc.

The meercat's tail being chopped off was definitely my bad. I haven't gone back and lookd at the original, but I'm pretty sure that shot went all the way to ground level. When I did the crop I was trying to keep it in proportion so if I wanted to print it the ratio would have been right. There was actually a youngling at the base of that mound he/she was guarding from. I have an individual shot of that one.

I knew I was over smoothing with the granddaughter's photo. I am still on a steep learning curve with LR3 and haven't figured out everything yet (far from it). I do have Scott Kelby's manual and hope to get much better.

Thanks again.