Bornean Orangutan...critique please...

[Walczak Photo]

Hey Folks,
Well, made another trip to the zoo yesterday (hey...membership has it's privledges! LOL) and while I have a few shot's I'll be posting as I get them processed, I wanted to get this shot up right away...



One BIG question.....does the color look right to everyone? I dunno what it is about the orangutan habitat at the Cleveland Zoo, but something about it wreaks havoc with the white balance on all of my digitals. I may have to actually invest in a grey card or something as no matter how I set the camera, I usually end up with real nasty blue hues (not to mention the glass is usually filthy and hard to shoot thru to begin with). I know that her right eye is a tad soft on this shot, but I'll fix that later. My main concern is the color...I really had to work this one over to get it to this...in fact, I actually had to download a pic of orangutan's off the zoo's website just to get it this close. Does it look reasonably close? Natural? Comments please!

Thanks!
Jim

[Dalantech]

Check out this tutorial: http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1075277

It's one of the few things that I do during post processing and most of the time it works...

[Walczak Photo]

Dalantech,
In fact I had tried that...setting the white/dark/grey points and really, it made things worse....hence, why I did it "by hand". I'm sure there are those who would disagree with me, but I tend to find that setting the white/black/grey like that works well if you have well established points of colors to select from (i.e. white "whites", black "blacks", etc.). In this image, since almost everything was of similar tonal values, finding the "mid grey" is kind of like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack and I really wasn't happy with what I was coming up with.

At the risk of sounding rude, either way I just wanted an opinion of "does it look reasonably natural"...i.e. a simple yes or no would have sufficed or "too heavy on the reds" or "too dark/too light" or something similar would have been even better. I wasn't really looking for a tutorial on how to make it look natural. Since you posted that link though, I'm assuming that to you it didn't look right (yes/no?)...I'll take a closer look at it again in a day or two...thanks.

Bright Blessings,
Jim

[bob_r]

Jim,

I think the color is too dark and not enough red (that's assuming your orangutan is approximately the same color as mine). Here's a pic of one I took at the zoo and since he was in an open area, I didn't have to contend with glass distortions. Also, as you know, I don't do much post processing, so these colors haven't been altered.

Bob B



I missed the "Bornean" part. Not sure what the one above is, but this is a Borneo. I had to do a closeup on his face to capture it because all the light made his face too dark.

[Walczak Photo]

Thanks Bob...yea...that's what I thought. I'm gonna have to go back and play with it some more before I print it. Like I said originally, I had just downloaded a pic of the zoo's website for reference...I probably should have downloaded some others from other sources as well. Other then the lightness/darkness issue, at least it looks close...much better then the blue tinted orignal! LOL!!! I looks like yours were taken outside in daylight...I probably won't push the reds that bright, but it gives me another good reference...thanks.

BTW...while I could be wrong, I believe they are both Bornean's...your bottom pic is of a male and the top pic is of a female (someone please correct me if I'm wrong here!).

Alrighty...that's it for now. Got a new batch of pic's from the Akron Zoo yesterday that I'm working on (while simoultaniously trying to do the bills....blech).

Bright Blessings,
Jim