Red Fox + Repost

Excellent detail! Love the pose, snow on the face, and that tongue!
Perfect comp, imo.
Nothing as pretty as a red fox against snow!!

Sandy

very nice, love the snowline in the composition, very nice model, well done.

Hi Dan,

Nice simple composition and, at least to my eye, technically sound (focus, depth of field, etc.). One other thing strikes me about this shot - to me it simply looks a little under-exposed - that snow is awfully dark and the fox isn't popping out the way it could. I'm betting that increasing the brightness on this shot by about 2/3 to a full stop would make a real difference to this shot (and based on what I'm seeing I doubt the snow - or the lighter regions of the fox - would blow out with this amount of exposure increase).

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad

Thanks for the comments. Brad, here is a repost with +2/3 stop exposure increase on the overall shot. I think the fox does look better. I always struggle with snow, whether to leave it a little blue, or make it white and blow out some areas.
More suggestions on how to handle snow in images would be appreciated.

Dan,

Really neat image. You did very well with the composition and the tongue is fantastic.

Rick

Hi Dan,

I prefer the re-post. While I realize snow is almost never truly white (largely due to the light it reflects), to me in the original it simply was too dark (I have no problem with the blue in it, but just how dark it was). Snow can be tricky to handle and, given where I live (in the "Great White North") I've spent a considerable amount of time playing around with dealing with it digitally. Here's a few observations:

1. The key to making snow look realistic is in ensuring that all the subtle white-on-white tonal detail is retained. Which leads to...

2. Not all raw converters are equal in retaining white-on-white detail - this is a large part of the reason I use the raw converter I do (after tons of experimentation)

3. Regardless of the raw converter one uses, it is usually possible to make the white-on-white tonal differences show better via careful contrast adjustment in your favourite image editor. I normally do this with a selective curves adjustment - and the key to doing it is picking the right point on the curve to "pivot" around.

4. While I don't like to recommend "must buy this piece of software to solve the problem" solutions, I have to admit I personally like to use a product called Light Zone to separate out (maximize the difference between) close tonal values (which in this case means maximizing white-on-white detail). I use this product as the LAST step in my workflow and tend to use it selectively (on only parts of an image). Ultimately there's nothing that this product does that you couldn't do in Photoshop (assuming a high skill level) but I find it much quicker and a very intuitive way to explore the lighting of an image (it's a good idea generator). But that's one of my most closely guarded secrets - so don't tell anyone!

To see what I mean in terms of bringing out the white-on-white detail, see the snow in this image - before a LOT of contrast tweaking in both PS and Light Zone the snow showed dramatically less detail...

Cheers...

Brad

PS: I think the snow on this image could use a LITTLE selective tonal adjustment (to bring out the white-on-white detail), but not always the easiest thing to do!

Very nice details and pose. Strong composition and perfect whites.

Congrats

D&L

Really like the little bit of snow on the nose. Nice image!

Wow, Brad, Thanks a million for the advice. It will take me a little while to digest what you said and practice it. I should have some opportunity to practice on snow in the next 3 months, as I live in Montana.

I like this sharp image of this fox with the snow on his face.

Sweet Red Fox Dan, I like repost better. Make's me eager for my visit in February.

Ken Archer

The red foxes against the snow are so nice.. lovely shot! I really like the tongue and bits of snow on his head. I like the repost much better, but a little more detail in the snow as Brad suggest would be worth trying.

I LOVE foxes in the snow Dan and this makes me want one even more. Last year I finlally found a great fox location, but unfortunately they had an outbreak of disease and they are all gone from there. I am so sad for them. Then on top of it, we have only had 1 sdnow storm so far this winter....am I whinning too much??
Anyhowm, this one is excellent. The snow on the snout takes this over the top for me.

Wonderful Dan
Nice position, great color, nice detail on the snow, sharpened nicely