Peggy Nugent
About the Image(s)
One of the things I am going to miss most about LA is the wonderful gorilla habitat at the LA Zoo. I thought this image was a good fit for May, with Mother's Day coming up soon.
I know from past experience that the gorillas' eyes get lost in the shadows if I don't over-exposure the rest of the picture. This tends to blow out the background, but that's not necessarily bad because it often needs some help anyway.
I started with the mother as the base image and added the layer with the baby selected in the mask. I added a stone background from another original (not shown), at lower opacity, to create a background with a little texture in midtone luminosity. I made various local exposure adjustments and cropped.
I was pretty happy with it, but brought it into Topaz Adjust to see what it would look like with different effects. I quite liked the high key filter, which made the background very bright.
After having it around for some weeks and looking at it now and again, I decided the background's brightness was distracting. I masked in the stone at lowered opacity in luminosity mode. I tried the image in b&w, then added sepia on the gorillas, and finally got the final colors with a topaz restyle filter. I also applied a Topaz impressions filter at various opacity to soften the image a bit.
This round’s discussion is now closed!
11 comments posted
The background is somewhat too light to my eyes. Perhaps more texture would improve.   Posted: 05/09/2021 18:35:26
The background is somewhat too light to my eyes. Perhaps more texture would improve.   Posted: 05/09/2021 18:35:27
I originally tried a darker background but felt it made the image too dark, because the gorillas have so much dark fur. Maybe a vignette would help though. I'll try that.   Posted: 05/12/2021 12:24:25
I thought so too, and part of the reason I submitted this image was to see if I was just being too picky. I think that while doing a high key of such dark subjects reveals a lot of details that are normally hard to see, it also makes it difficult to keep the same level of texture everywhere. Well, it was an interesting experiment.
I might try this again sometime with something else in the baby's place.   Posted: 05/12/2021 12:33:44
I'll give the shadows a try. Thanks for your suggestion.   Posted: 05/14/2021 19:19:02
I think I'm missing some toning in the subjects and the background is brighter than the subjects are so that it seems that there's a fight to stay in the center.
I played with your image a bit. I know you wanted to go High Key but thought I like the tones better with it a bit darker in the background and more toned on the subjects. All to taste...   Posted: 05/14/2021 15:44:55
I really like the way the gorillas look in your version, and I love the background, but for me they don't fit together quite as I would like.
Can you tell me what you did to the image? I'd like to duplicate the two bits separately for two different images.
  Posted: 05/14/2021 19:16:29
You're right, she is falling out of the frame a bit. I think it will work better with the frame extended a bit to the right and down. Good suggestion!   Posted: 05/17/2021 10:19:15