Snow Mouth

It is a beautiful picture, with the expression of the macaque catching the full attention of the viewer. I also like the shining white of the background and the way the subject is suspended in white. There is a noticeable grey halo around the macaque, which disturbs a little.

There is a noticeable grey halo around the macaque, which disturbs a little.

I used a soft edged mask to selectively adjust the contrast of the macaque, but I can't see the grey halo.

I suspect either your monitor is not callibrated or you're using an lcd screen?

When I make very drastic contrast adjustments to the image I can see the grey halo you're talking about, but on all the monitors in my house, I can't see it.

Do more people see this halo?

Great image, while growing up in Minnesota I often visted the zoo and this was my favorite species, especially during winter when it was playing in the snow, so this brings back good memories for me.

As for the halo, I see it as well, though I'm on a cheap dell LCD monitor at work, not sure how it would appear on my other monitor at home but things are usually much better on that.

- Luke

Awesome shot Marsel. Truly amazing

I have a 24" Imac and in the calibrated LCD i just see a very, very soft grey halo, but don't disturb me at all.

I love it Marsel! Its nice to see a macaque out of a hot spring!

I have a calibrated 27" iMac, and there's a slight halo, but it doesn't bother me at all. Great work!
-Cam

Awesome image! Love the detail and eye contact.

What an excellent shot, artistic as well as depicting environment and behavior

Superb image, love the all white snow in contrast to the monkey, especially those eyes and the face. Very nice use of flash as well, it looks very natural. I also see an oh-so slight grey halo (calibrated lcd).

Thanks for your comments.

I will recalibrate my monitor tomorrow (I've been getting warning messages for quite some time now anyway) and have a closer look at the mask I made. Usually this kind of subtleties don't show against 99% of natural backgrounds, but a white background is pretty relentless.

Excellent photo Marsel. I also see the halo, but my imac is not one to judge things with I think.

Hi Marsel,

As always, technically very good (to excellent). The exposure on the macaque in particular is superb and you handled the flash-fill (and post-processing) perfectly. Regarding the halo - it's visible on my laptop and my intentionally slightly out of calibration 20" monitor, but virtually invisible on my "real" (and carefully calibrated) 30" image-editing monitor. I think you're absolutely right that the white background is very, very demanding. I suspect that the halo will be visible to many viewers and will detract from the image for them, so perhaps using the soft-edge mask used here isn't the best choice for this particular presentation style (by this I mean that the image will be viewed by a lot of folks with monitors either out of calibration or calibrated differently than your's so they'll have a less-than-optimal experience while viewing this excellent image).

Halo aside, I have to admit that I find that the lower macaque-snow border is more of a distraction to me than the halo. In a sense I can't envision a scenario (other than blowing snow, I suppose) where there would be such a distinct difference in image sharpness between two areas that are so close together (i.e., the totally blurred snow that's virtually touching the monkey vs. the exceptionally sharp fur of the monkey). I suppose it's possible that the snow I'm referring to is actually a snowbank that's at a distance from the monkey (and much closer to you than the monkey is) but, given the absolute lack of detail in the snow - and thus the paucity of depth clues here - to my eye the out-of-focus foreground snow does appear to be right against the monkey. And, to me, this sharpness differential of apparently adjoining zones is somewhat discordant. Hope this makes sense to you...

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad

I really like your snow monkey shots Marsel. Thanks for posting all the details (as you always do). It is great to see someone with so much creativity help to give others ideas by listing so much of the detail. I love the shot!

This image was recently used as a double page spread, and there is not a hint of the halo in the final result. But then again, magazines are not fine art prints, so they are more forgiving. I made some minor adjustments to the mask, and everything looks perfect now.

I suppose it's possible that the snow I'm referring to is actually a snowbank that's at a distance from the monkey

It's a snowbank somewhere halfway between the camera and the monkey. There is still detail in the snow in the original raw file, but I chose to get rid of it during processing.

Thanks for your feedback.

This is so cool!! I love it.

~ja

Love the eyes and the white surrounding the monkey.