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Help w/ Lion Safari Photo

Help w/ Lion Safari Photo

Old Jun 21, 2012, 11:00 am
  #1  
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Help w/ Lion Safari Photo

Hi, I went to Tanzania earlier this year for my first safari, and I just bought a couple groupons for 20x30 pic to canvas that I'd like to use for a couple choice shots. I took a pic of a male lion that I really like for his facial expression, but I'm really disappointed that the left side of his face is blown out from the sun. I'm a beginner with LR, but I tried fixing it up as much as I could and it's not as good as I'd like it to be. Can anyone suggest what else I can do to try to make this better? (I shot in JPG, not RAW, FYI) Would this type of defect in a photo make it unsatisfactory for you to want to hang on your wall / would most normal non-photo people notice there's something wrong with this photo? Thanks for any help.

P.S. Here is the original shot from my camera and my editing job:



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Old Jun 21, 2012, 12:29 pm
  #2  
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Originally Posted by $1500forGLD
Hi, I went to Tanzania earlier this year for my first safari, and I just bought a couple groupons for 20x30 pic to canvas that I'd like to use for a couple choice shots. I took a pic of a male lion that I really like for his facial expression, but I'm really disappointed that the left side of his face is blown out from the sun. I'm a beginner with LR, but I tried fixing it up as much as I could and it's not as good as I'd like it to be. Can anyone suggest what else I can do to try to make this better? (I shot in JPG, not RAW, FYI) Would this type of defect in a photo make it unsatisfactory for you to want to hang on your wall / would most normal non-photo people notice there's something wrong with this photo? Thanks for any help.

P.S. Here is the original shot from my camera and my editing job... (snip)
In my experience the vast majority of viewers will not notice the lack of detail, and you can't put into a picture data that's not there to begin with.

I downloaded it and fiddled with it some, and concluded that to my eye the picture was more pleasing and impressive in black and white rather than over-saturated color. I'd recommend you play with it in greyscale, play with tone mapping as a b&w image, and maybe look at slight edge enhancement or other ways of popping the image.

Going to b&w will also probably do you well in converting it to a poster. Color registry in going from digital to big print is always sketchy, and you often get big shifts in contrast to boot. By starting with a greyscale image, you reduce the chances of unpleasant surprises when you size it up.

If you still decide to go with color, then I'd really back off on the saturation. The green of the foreground grass is very distracting to my eye.

ETA: if you go to B&W, throw on a little sepia tone and see what you think. I like it.

Last edited by Gardyloo; Jun 21, 2012 at 12:36 pm
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Old Jun 21, 2012, 7:47 pm
  #3  
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Something like this maybe, if you keep it in colour?



Agree with the comment above about the risks associated with how the printer handles the colour conversion. B&W or sepia may be a better option:

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Old Jun 22, 2012, 5:29 pm
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The best I could do

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Old Jun 22, 2012, 6:50 pm
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Try using the burn tool a little bit. But yeah, as mentioned up above, if the white is blown out, there isn't a really whole lot you can do about it.

If you were shooting in RAW you could have really fixed that up quite a bit.

Maybe start shooting in RAW?
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