Isolating a buck

This is indeed nice, Lon. First of all, this is a nice sized buck in velvet. That's a plus to start with. The light seems to illuminate the edges of the antlers and makes them stand out. The image has a soft painterly feel, yet the large image has good detail in the buck's head and antlers. Just an all around beautiful work.

Lon--I like the composition and the out of focus foreground gives a nice mood to the scene.......................Jim

Hi Lon! Beautiful! I really like the end result and was intrigued by your approach in processing steps (thanks for sharing). I do think the 720px version has a subtle suggestion that you did SOMETHING to create or enhance this soft effect, but interestingly the larger version appears more natural to me. It could be the screens on the two devices I viewed this on, so don't put too much weight on that comment! Bottom line is this is a a very appealing image that I suspect would sell well in a number of contexts, should that be on your radar.

Nice looking buck and l like the soft feel the oof vegetation gives the image.

Hey Lon,

Interesting approach you've taken here. I like simple images and gravitate towards those with some form of what I term "visual contrast" - could be standard light/dark contrast, can be colour contrast, and often it's focus-contrast (sharply contrasting in-focus and out-of-focus) elements. So obviously this image pushes some of the right buttons for me. On the "standard" compositional issues of the positioning of subject, frame orientation, etc., all looks good here. Techs (exposure, etc.) look mostly solid too. I do find the weeds (almost looks like invasive knapweed) a bit off-putting - not that they're major distractions, but when I imagine the scene "clean" (without the weeds), the extra simplicity is a bonus.

In terms of the soft/hard contrast in the image - I almost wish that the buck was a little MORE solidly obscured by OOF grass in the chest region and that the facial region (and antlers) was a little sharper to make it pop a little more. I know that lens (assuming it was the 200-400) isn't maximally sharp at 400mm at f4, so guessing that the lack of softness is a function of that - and stopping down slightly wasn't an option for you (bringing more foreground and/or background into focus wouldn't have helped at ALL!).

Final note: I've never found blurring in post to be nearly as effective as blurring-by-good-bokeh in the field - somehow digital blurring isn't quite there yet. And, for some illogical reason, to me (applying ONLY to my own photography) it feels that blurring in post is going a little too far in image manipulation...just thinking out loud...

Thanks for posting this - interesting image, interesting technique, and good food for thought...

Cheers...

Brad

I like it a lot Lon, particularly the out of focus background flowers and how they contrast with the sharp head of the buck, thanks for sharing the processing info.

Really nice Lon. I love the simple composition and yet I know how hard it is to achieve that simple but elegant look and feel to an image. You have done well.

I really like this picture. The softness all around the buck is really cool. I love photographing bucks, and especially bucks in velvet! I like how sharp he is and how he stands out in the picture. I did a double-take when I first saw this because his brow tines are so close to his head I thought he was growing a second set of antlers!

Your processing looks great, Lon, nice work!