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Dear all,
I would like to receive your critique and shooting tips on this little golden m, taken in Mgahinga National Forest in Uganda. This species of maquace ms is endemic to this national park and to see them, you have to trek quite a bit. Shooting them is tricky, as by the time you reach the location, the light is high up and the light in the forest is far from ideal. They also move very fast, which doesn´t make it easier. I took this photo in manual mode and due to the changing light situations in the forest, I constantly had to adjust the settings. I love how this little m moved and the position of his thumb, that looks like a thumbs up signal. Unfortunalty due to the low shutter speed, the image has a bit of motion blur. What would you do to in this situation and can this photo be corrected better in post?
EXIF:
NIKON D780
Tamron 150-600 f/5-6.3
240mm
1/250
f/6.3
ISO 1600
Lightroom, Topaz
Thanks for your critique,
Best,
Thomas
Somehow the M shows up instead of m.
Thomas,
Excellent photo of the macaque! It's the kind of animal that makes viewers think ahhhh - it's so cute! The direct expression and thumbs-up add a lot to that.
1/250 seems a fast shutter speed, but obviously the macaque was moving quickly. You asked about sharpening. Photoshop has some tools, but Topaz AI seems to work better most of the time. I sharpened a screen capture with that software. The automatic settings suggested 'Motion Blur' 30/100 and 'Noise removal' 27/100. That made the fur look a bit over-sharpened with a 'brittle' look, so I pulled the slider back a little. The face is the most important part, and especially the eyes because that's where viewers are going to look first. When the eyes are sharp some slight blur for the rest of the photo is generally OK.
There were a few small white specks on the right side of the frame that showed up more clearly after sharpening, so they were removed with Photoshop's retouch tool.
I don't have any other editing suggestions. It was tempting to brush the eyes with the Saturation tool to give them a bit more intensity, but I did not do that.
Thank you for sharing the photo with us, and for telling the story of your journey to get the shot.
. . . . . Steven, senior critic
PS: I noticed the same phenomenon - that when you type the word " m o n k e y ", it shows as just 'm'. Strange.
Dear all,
I would like to receive your critique and shooting tips on this little golden m, taken in Mgahinga National Forest in Uganda. This species of maquace ms is endemic to this national park and to see them, you have to trek quite a bit. Shooting them is tricky, as by the time you reach the location, the light is high up and the light in the forest is far from ideal. They also move very fast, which doesn´t make it easier. I took this photo in manual mode and due to the changing light situations in the forest, I constantly had to adjust the settings. I love how this little m moved and the position of his thumb, that looks like a thumbs up signal. Unfortunalty due to the low shutter speed, the image has a bit of motion blur. What would you do to in this situation and can this photo be corrected better in post?
EXIF:
NIKON D780
Tamron 150-600 f/5-6.3
240mm
1/250
f/6.3
ISO 1600
Lightroom, Topaz
Thanks for your critique,
Best,
Thomas
Hello Thomas,
Welcome to the Critique Forum and thank you for submitting for our critique this photo of a very cute macaque!
I agree with you that 1/250 sec is too slow a shutter speed for a moving animal. If he had just been posing for you, it could have been fine but not if he was swinging from a branch to another.
But perhaps you were trying to keep your ISO low which is a difficult choice to make sometimes. I know because I use a MFT camera sometimes and it doesn’t do well with high ISO.
So, regarding your photo, here a a couple of things I would suggest to do : I deleted the branch that was across his body by using Topaz Photo AI, Remove option. Normally I do it manually with a clone tool but with fur it can be more difficult to get good results. I then erase the other branch on the top left quadrant.
Besides that, what I thought to myself is what a pity it is that we don’t see his tail. So I tried something: I hid his tail behind greenery by cloning some leaves on top of his tail. Not sure if you would like that but... Just an idea!
Then, I adjusted the Levels lightly.
I went back to Topaz Photo Ai to sharpen the image using the Motion Blur option. It not ideal because the movement is too great but it is the best I could do.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to you.
Good luck
Lucie s.c.
Dear Lucie, dear Steven,
thanks so much for your feedback! Really appreciated!
You both edited the image very nicely and somehow removed a lot of the motion blur. I will continue trying. At the end, this is what I like about wildlife photography. It never comes easy. You need patiance and persistence and slowly improve your skills, knowing that there is also a lot of luck involved.
Thanks again,
Best,
Thomas
