Recent meet at Adelaide Zoo

[DanielA]

Well I've just finished processing my shots from the recent meet at the Adelaide Zoo.

Female Tiger


Thirsty Male Tiger


Male Lion thinking of freedom...?


C&C

Daniel

[fozzie]

Daniel - excellent cross section of shots from the day.

For anybody looking at your shots, I am sure they would go for the 'Thirsty Male Tiger' drinking, but for the hardest shot by far is the 'Female Tiger'. That shot is exceptional, due to it being behind glass and she mainly hides at the rear of the cage or on the landing, concealed by trees.

[DanielA]

Daniel - excellent cross section of shots from the day.

Thanks Fozzie. They were my favorites.
There are a few more in my gallery, including the tiger playing with his toy.

For anybody looking at your shots, I am sure they would go for the 'Thirsty Male Tiger' drinking, but for the hardest shot by far is the 'Female Tiger'. That shot is exceptional, due to it being behind glass and she mainly hides at the rear of the cage or on the landing, concealed by trees.

That was pure luck. She was still eating and it was still quiet around her enclosure. She just glanced up a few times before returning to crunch through her chunk of meat.

Daniel

[Finch]

Daniel,

I really love the tiger drinking. Its an absolute corker. The only slight distraction is the blurry rock in the right hand, bottom corner. If you can clone this out, the shot is brilliant (still great with rock, though).

Cheers

Michael

[Big V]

Daniel, nice colours and lovely eyes in pic 2.

[DanielA]

Thanks Big V.

The only slight distraction is the blurry rock in the right hand, bottom corner. If you can clone this out, the shot is brilliant (still great with rock, though).

Thanks Michael.
I'm cautious about trying to clone out things on the complex background like water. I don't want to end up making it worse.

Daniel

[rookie2]

Great pics Daniel

really like #2 its all in the eyes!

what settings did you have the SB800 on? BTW can you provide the basic picasa workflow you use after a day like last tuesday - its still taking me ages!!

cheers and thanks for the day

Rookie2

[DanielA]

Thanks Rookie2.

what settings did you have the SB800 on?

I would have had it set on TTL and abouot -1 2/3. Hopefully just enough to fill the shadows and light the eyes.

BTW can you provide the basic picasa workflow you use after a day like last tuesday - its still taking me ages!!

I'm afraid I don't use Picasa. I've got a very hacky custom flow using PS CS2.

For the record, here is what I do:

- I've got a dos batch file that creates and directory structure and copies the NEF files from the CF card. The files read from the card are placed in a NEF folder.
- I use PreviewExtractor to get the embedded JPGs from the NEF files, to make sorting and viewing them easier. Those JPGs go into a different directory.
- Then I view the JPGs and move any crap ones (if any ) to a Trash folder. Following that I move the matching NEF files to the Trash folder.
- Then I go through the reamaining images and pick the best ones. Loading them up one-by-one into PS CS2 and tweak the ACR sliders and white balance. (I open the files as 16-bit AdobeRGB)
- In PS I use the Shadow/Highlights sliders to bring out the light and dark areas (no too much though).
- In PS I use smart sharpen of about 40-80% 1.2px.
- In PS convert to sRGB and 8-bit mode, then save the PSD file to an Edit directory.
- When I have done all the images I am going to, then I use a hacked version of the PS "Image Processor" script to apply my logo and save as JPG ready to upload to Smugmug.

I also find this time consuming to process images one-by-one, but it gives me the control I'm after. I also only normally do <20 images from a day, so it's not too bad.

I am currently adding to my flow to add a description and keywords to the EXIF in PS so it will automatically appear on Smugmug. I'm also writting a perl script to detect which Lens was used and place my matching keyword into the JPG. This should hopefully cut down a bit of time on smugmug.

Daniel

[suzanneg]

Beautiful tiger shots. When we were at the zoo the tigers were fast asleep.

[rookie2]

thanks Daniel

I'm still a luddite in these areas but I get the general gist of the workflow needed to manage the no of pics I'm now collecting.

now just need to hit the trash button on 98% of the crap I've kept so far!

cheers

Rookie

[DanielA]

Beautiful tiger shots. When we were at the zoo the tigers were fast asleep.

Thanks Suzanneg. The tigers seem to spend most their time sleeping. That day was the most active I have ever seen them.

I'm still a luddite in these areas but I get the general gist of the workflow needed to manage the no of pics I'm now collecting.

I think it's just a matter of trying different things until you work out the way that is best for you. Good luck.

Daniel

[wmaburnett]

Great color in the tiger!

[robw25]

danielA
love #2 great capture !!!!

cheers rob