Cool Morning Revisited-2

Hi Peter. The colours are more appealing with nicer intensity or chroma. If this is close to how the actual scene looked in the field, then I think that dialling in about a 1/2 stop of negative exposure compensation in-camera should have got you pretty close to what we are looking at. Simply keeping the iso low in a modern dSLR and letting the camera do the heavy lifting should work pretty well to capture the dynamic range in most scenes. Oversimplifying a bit I suppose but for this situation that is my feeling.

Hi Peter, I have to say that I prefer the first revision best. While there are some better details in this revision, I find the darker BG to be a distraction. I do think the deer is just a bit better. At this point, for me it is just a matter of personal appeal. Thanks again for sharing.

Hey Peter,

You'll smile at this one (different strokes for different folks thing) - I prefer this one, especially due to the darker background (sorry John, just my preference). Always hard to take ALL feedback into account, simply because much of it (especially when it comes to composition and aesthetics and composition) are in conflict.

While this suggestion may take the scene away from how it was in the field, I think from an aesthetic perspective pulling back the exposure on the foreground grass even more would help the image - it's a pretty major "eye magnet" right now (and at least some parts of it still seem a bit blown). Not sure if you're into selective adjustments, but often they are needed when shooting in contrasty situations (cameras just don't get it right on their own).

To expand just a tad on something Gary said - modern DSLR's do a great job on most of the technical end of things, but they still assume that a scene being viewed should be rendered as neutral gray overall (especially if using evaluative or matrix metering). Mid-day this is normally right - most scenes then aren't too far off neutral gray. But the minute you shoot in early morning, evening, or in any other naturally dark/low light condition, they over-expose the scene almost every time. Thus, you need to under-expose - either in the field or during raw processing. One of the most common problems I see in almost all wildlife photography is over-exposure...

Cheers...

Brad