Ocelot Portrait

[Syncharmony]

Hello, I am a new member of the DPS forums and a shutter clicker for a little under a year now. I hope to have a few good posting experiences on these forums over time.

With winter in full swing it's been a bit tough to get outside and take as many shots as I would like. The snow and bitter cold weather seems a constant companion and has kept me inside in front of the computer. The other night I was bored and decided it was time to polish the post-production skills up and try to do something with an older photo.

Here is the original photo of an Ocelot I took over the summer.



Nikon D80
1/25 sec
f/5
ISO 720
Taken with 55-200 mm VR at 120mm focal length

I liked the shot but felt like it could be a bit more "dramatic". The cat's eyes drew me in and I wanted to make them the star of the photo.

Using Aperture, I applied the monochrome settings via the Color Efex Pro plug-in. I also lightened the center marginally and darkened the edges.

Saved the picture, brought it back into Aperture and applied a fairly heavy vignette to help really kill the background and focus attention on the cat.

I exported the color version into GIMP. I used the pathing tool to select the eyes, feathered the edges and copied and pasted the eyes onto another layer. To this layer, I added an un-sharp mask and turned up the settings fairly high.

I set the layer mode to Overlay, and then turned down the opacity of the layer to blend it in with the original eyes. This helped the eyes shine a little more.

I flattened the image and then imported the B&W version of the photo as a new layer on top of the color layer. Once again, I used the pathing tool to select the eyes from the B&W layer and feathered the selection. I then cut the eyes out and pasted them on a new layer, and moved that layer to be positioned in between the B&W layer and the color layer.

Then, I slowly turned down the opacity slider of the Eyes layer to let the color punch through. I didn't want to go 100% with the color, but I just let about 40-50% of the color come through to give the eyes a bit of warmth and character without being an overwhelming "hit you over the head" kind of color punch.

End result:



View Large

I was pleased with the result. Hope you enjoy, any questions or C&C welcome.

[Teewinot]

Welcome to DPS!

I love what you've done with your shot. Very nice black and white conversion. Also, the subtle eye color works (sometimes selective color can be a little too obvious).

I wonder about the black space off to the left...perhaps cropping this off a bit would get the Ocelot's face into the left third of the composition, instead of right in the center? Just thinking out loud.

[wulf]

Yes - converting to black and white, and losing even more detail in the top left exposes that the head is centered in the image and the overall composition isn't very powerful. I think it would be worth experimenting with cropping - either as Teewinot suggests or perhaps to a square format, making the face relatively much larger in the frame.

Wulf

[AnnetteJ]

I like the way the ocelot is looking up at us, and the b+w seems to enhance that for me. I also like the subtle colour in the eyes. I agree that playing with crops would be interesting to see whether one of those suggested works better. Good pic anyway.

[bashfulsue]

I think both the before and after are very nice. I myself really like the 1st one. Maybe crop the left side. Just my 2 cents.

[ambur d]

Hope you don't mind if I tried my hand at editing it..



That's my crop suggestion.
I also multiplied the background to make it darker (masking out the ocelot) and dodge/burned his eyes and markings.
I'm not a big fan of selective color, soooo.. my take!

[bashfulsue]

Originally Posted by ambur d

Hope you don't mind if I tried my hand at editing it..



That's my crop suggestion.
I also multiplied the background to make it darker (masking out the ocelot) and dodge/burned his eyes and markings.
I'm not a big fan of selective color, soooo.. my take!

I like your editing very much,

[jiminyClickit]

Syncharmony, Welcome

Beautiful photograph, and very subtle work on the eyes. I wondered if a wild animal would seem wilder if darker, with vibrant eyes. This crop gives the whiskers priority, which also kept some body to explain the pose and the shot being from higher up: