Dandelion Bear
by Joe James
It's been a while since I've been on as I've been busy with work and moving back to Florida after two wonderful years in Canada. I finally have some down time to post a few photos so this is the first in a while.
I've always wanted a shot of a black bear in a field of dandelions but never quite realized how difficult it would be until I had the chance this summer in Yoho NP. Saw this cinnamon phase black bear in a huge field of dandelions with a harsh mid-day sun to boot. After more PSE work than I normally like (levels & contrast), it's still a bit harsh. I was curios if anyone has any tips on dealing with this very high contrast situation, bot during and after the shot. Thanks for looking.
Canon EOS 7D
Canon 100-400L IS @ 285
ISO 400, F5.6, 1/640 sec
Comments
3 commentsThese guys do love the dandelions! I like the colours here and the subject is giving you a nice head-turn. As you say, the lighting is quite harsh and you've handled it quite well. I find the bear a bit to centred for my own taste - mostly on the vertical axis. If this were mine (and already not cropped much), I'd experiment with removing some of the foreground - probably up to the level where the major out-of-focus zone in the left corner becomes less noticeable.
In terms of how to handle this in the field and during processing. In the field my primary concern here would be not blowing out the yellows - it's very easy to lose detail in them. Without seeing the original capture (presumably raw) it's hard to really judge how to approach the processing, but likely I would selectively work the brightness of this scene (and the contrast in particular) using exposure blends (i.e, making multiple raw conversions that differ in exposure and then carefully composite them in Photoshop into a single final image). But impossible to give specifics (such as the total exposure range I'd blend over or the number of raw conversions needed) without seeing the raw file...
Cheers...thanks for sharing this...
Brad