Zoo Photography, Part 3

Post Processing on Zoo shots is very often a necessity, as I mentioned earlier. Sometimes you have to edit out distracting backgrounds, fence marks, dirty glass, you name it. It can be unavoidable and shouldn’t necessarily stand in the way between deletion and a really great photo.

The most important thing is developing a sense of “how” you want the photo to look before you start working on it and often before you take it. It is also important to recognise some photos don’t need anything at all done to them other than the usual levels and sharpening. This is one of my favourite Gorilla shots but the only processing done was conversion to black and white. I was lucky - the light was nice and even and I could get the shot I wanted, in camera. The composition is more important than anything that could be done by photoshop.

But then you get zoo shots that are only going to be great shots if they are processed. Sure, I might have the photo perfectly in focus, with good lighting and nice composition, but it’s still going to be a “Tiger at the zoo” shot, rather than a Tiger shot to be remembered. This is the original Tiger shot taken at Melbourne Zoo. Nothing special? The lighting was okay, and this was as close as I could get. Notice that in my haste the composition is a little lacking too - I should have included the feet.

I then processed the photo to look as below. This is an *extreme* version of processing that I normally wouldn’t do, but Tigers especially are intense, photogenic animals who lend themselves well to these kinds of interpretations.

As you can see, the change is dramatic and is no longer a “realistic shot”, but the point is to notbe afraid to experiment, process and go further with zoo shots, in order to make it a shot you really love.

This next one is an example where the processing was actually quite minimal in effort and time compared to the above, but I feel still works better than the original because the focus is truly and only on the lion.

The edited version ended up like this:

Now of course, everyone wants to know how how how. I’m certainly very far from a photoshop expert and have only been using the program for a few years and without any training. I have found that there truly is no “recipe” that can be shared, because it is different for each shot.

I can recommend the following actions, which I sometimes use as a “base” and then play around with until the shot looks how I want it to.

Midnight Sepia
Midnight Black
Draganizer

You can get the first two at http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm

There are many Draganizer actions to be found if you google.

I cannot stress enough that you aren’t going to get an amazing shot by just using the actions. It needs a LOT of tweaking and playing around until you get to know what will work. Midnight Sepia is a good start because it creates a soft sepia glow. If you are burning out the background I recommend doing that first before you use the action.

An example of what I would do with Tiger shots, is to open up the highlights (using shadow/highlight tool) use midnight black, tweak and change it, then add a draganizer, tweak and change and then play around with hue/saturation/sharpening/contrast. I cannot give a step by step because the lighting and original image make every ‘choice’ unique.

On the lion shot, I cropped, highlight on the eyes, used Midnight black on very low opacity and then burnt out the background using the “burn” tool. Very quick and simple. Good photoshop techniques don’t necessarily need to take 5 hours to achieve!

In summary, have an idea before you start on how you want the shot to look like. It really should be the idea you had in your head when you took the shot! Don’t try and over-process every shot, and don’t expect actions to be magical. Practice in photoshop and a vision of how you want the final photo to look will be the key.

Visit Zoo Photography Part 1

Visit Zoo Photography Part 2