Editing Wildlife Photos Professionally by Marlon du Toit

alpha hi my name is Milan de TOI I'm a professional safari guide wildlife photographer and Sony Alpha ambassador now today I'm going to take time to talk to you about how to get your images to look like the pros now I'm gonna run through a few easy steps steps that actually will make you think back to why haven't I done this before or so I hope but before I get into that I also want to give you a little bit of insight on the important steps you have to take in the field to get the image just right for the professional look now starting off you have to think about the shot right from the beginning before you trip the shutter make sure that the photograph you're gonna take is something you really want to often we get into the field and we just take photographs for the sake of it now that's something that is self-explanatory if it's your first Safari and you're a little bit trigger-happy but ultimately to get a photograph that looks like the professionals you need to think like a professional now many professional wildlife photographers when they go into the field expect a handful of good images to come out of a particular trip I'll think about that if you take 5,000 photographs and your expectations is 5 to 10 photographs a very small rate to consider compared to the number of photographs that you would have taken now apply that mindset to what you do is the photograph you wanting to take really worthwhile is that the shot that you most want do you think you're gonna be using that photograph and that's how you should be thinking is is the photo in front of me is that the one is that the one that I want to process and the one that I ultimately want to share with people on social media or put in a book or put on my wall that's the number one question secondly is are you focused on composition composition is incredibly important because yes with today's cameras like Sony a7r for with just over 60 million pixels it's easy to crop afterwards in processing but still the process and the journey of getting it right in camera as best as possible cannot be beat again when you get into this scene think about is my vehicle position in the right way do I need to move back do I need to move forward all these things to come together to create the final image a professional wildlife photographer would pay a lot of attention to what is in front of him what's behind the subject what's in front of the subject and where his vehicle or him as a person will be positioned and that's something very important for you to consider is where are you in the scene what will your ultimate composition be like should you give it a dark background should you give it a light background should you include more sky do you have to be closer that's very very important and a good process to consider in the field and then lastly a very important tip is exposure all right so sometimes exposure you can process and get right as well in the in post-processing what's important is just to try and think about the exposure in the field should you underexpose or overexpose and in other words a faster or slower shutter speed and should you give it a dark background or a brighter background all of which will ultimately affect your exposure so right off the bat three things that are very important to consider would be the composition what are you composing how are you shooting the scene thinking like a pro is this photograph one that you will keep or will you discard at the end of the day and lastly the exposure of your shot is extremely important because ultimately it affects the final product of your image all right so there you have it that explains the bulk of it now we're gonna get into processing your images and I'm gonna give you a few hints and tips here that hopefully will get your images looking like the professionals that you love to follow I love to break it down in Lightroom but Doby Lightroom which is the processing platform that I love using I don't like to over complicate things personally and I love a good workflow now one of the most common mistakes people make when they're getting to Lightroom is they will open the file and they'll open the image and they will go through each and every slider toggle it play around with it which ultimately will slow you down that's not the way to go about the job don't try and play with every single slider look at the photograph in front of you and this is the most important thing that I can tell you is look at the photograph and decide what that photograph requires what's best for that particular photograph is it a darkening do you need more contrast you need to darken the image doesn't need more highlights do you need to emphasize the clouds do you need to bring in a bit of a net to emphasize the subject are the eyes not popping do you need to bring the eyes out all of these are questions you need to ask yourself beforehand because for each one of those answers there's a tool in Lightroom to do the job well so that's important to consider don't over complicate things don't run through just every setting and every slider look at the image decide what's the best result what do you need to apply to that image to make it work in post-processing and without further ado let's look at a few photographs and examples that I've put together to give you a few hints that will best give you the result that you're after I'm not gonna process the images from beginning to end what I merely want to do is show you the original file and then show you what the image would look like before and then what the result will look like with the changes that we have made the topics that I will cover with you today will be contrasts in other words whites and blacks will look at the white slider in itself in particular is very very important we'll look at white balance now white balance is over looked quite often and I'm going to show you how to do white balance on a global scene and I'm also going to show you how to do white balance top and bottom of the image splitting it up in order to get the best possible result and color balance in your particular file I'm also going to be looking at skies and I'm also going to be looking at how to effectively use your brushes in Lightroom something that is again understated and undervalued but brushwork in Lightroom is very important and it will give you a fantastic final product so without further ado let's get into the post-processing side of things and let's get those images looking like the pros alright so getting into the first photograph which is one of a Jaguar I look at a photograph like this one of the first things I will tend to do is to straighten the image so I'll go into my crop tool very simply and look at that horizon try to get it nice and straight and balanced and there we go also crop in a bit from the side again like I mentioned I'm not going to perfect each photograph I just want to show you the big difference that it makes between using white balance on an image to make colors poppin to make it more white vibrant in this particular case now what's nice is I ever and even the top of the image is one color tone the bottom of the image is another color tone so I use the grad filter in Lightroom or pop that up there and I'll affect their changes which I want to wake make which will be color temperature I'll make it a little bit bluer to emphasize the mud in the water and the foreground start at the bottom and draw it up like that so that'll give us a bit of a starting point yeah let's say take it up to about minus 12 or so for before the color in the top and in the bottom and now we go for the color and the top again a grad folder from the top down and let's say we want to warm this up a little bit we don't want it as bluish you want a nice warm tone on there on the background and on that cat so that'll be that change so let's say let's say clothes so the white balance change a low now watch if I go and show you what the white balance change alone would have done to this image so if I create a virtual copy just to show you the effect of that if I look at at this one here reset the copy and we look at that difference you will see that already just by doing the white balance side of things alone will give you quite a big difference so if you look at those two the image on the left being a pure fix and white balance if you look at the color tone at the bottom versus the color turned at the bottom here you'll see on the left that the the copy is a lot better and a beautiful result and a great color tone in the image purely from a white balance point of view so all I did is white balance the bottom change and white balance top change it and the result already speaks for itself now if we go and process that that's the foundation if you work off the wrong balance it sets a wrong foundation for your entire image whereas if you work off a correct white balance from the start which is something I always try and do you don't add unnecessary color or tones afterwards so if we look as that as a foundation I lift the whites a little bit make it pop so we'll talk about whites and a little bit but whites is an effective way to an image can be quite flat so when you pop the whites and leaves the contrasts alone you bring up the whites and the result is quite beautiful so all we've had to do here without adding any any contrast or any color anything like that the only changes we've made to this particular image is to change white balance top and bottom as well as the white slider to give it a little bit of energy and an atmosphere and look at that change so for me that's a massive difference the image on the left the image on the right all I did as I said white balance and whites no color no contrast nothing the result is very very big it's a massive change between the two and something important to note now the same with an image like this so if we look at this cat right here and and I look at this far first of all I want to straighten it now they again the same principle with a plier I can blanket white balance this to some extent but it's always I like the color tone at the top again now again a standard would be to change the white balance at the top here and do it overall but you can see if you want to get the water bluer the cat and the top goes blue if you want to get the cat darker and and and more warmer the bottom and the water also goes warm so a new way for you to think about white balance is perhaps to do this we've straightened it again get on to the grad filter take it up from the bottom to the top and let's make that a little bit bluer in tone and in color so we'll say something like like that so we've changed that white balance not are you getting Oh a sense of water and now if I do one from the top down we don't have to do this too much it's a really beautiful color in the top but we can now say we can warm that up a little bit warm that up a little bit add a touch of saturation to the top and now if we look at what we've done here before and after and if I show you this image and the next one look at the change purely from doing white balance now that's massive guys I've not touched any other setting or adjustment in Lightroom or laughs Dania has changed the actual white balance of that image top and bottom and the image on the left the processed version you can see is heaps better massive we better now let's just process that a touch further if I say all right cool I want to just add a little bit more blacks yeah so we increase the contrast a touch we take the levels of whites up a little bit and let's add a little bit of saturation so very minimal changes but I've set the foundation that is an important thing to remember I'm working off a good foundation and looking at the two now side by side look at that difference left and right color vibrant beautiful distinction between more than the cat whereas on the right shot and daylight on a warm balance just doesn't do it justice so guys I can't emphasize the use of the clever and correct use of white balance enough it is very very important to understand it and to apply it correctly especially with the white slider which I'm gonna get into next let's talk about contrast in an image again if I look at the following photograph which is one of a Jaguar sorry for focusing on Jaguars but it just happens to be the topic of it or the flavor of the day but if I look at an image like this I shot this in the field quite dark knowing what I would do in post-processing it's a lot of dark in this image and I don't want to over expose it I want to keep that dark forest jungle look now all I have to do is come into post-processing go to this white slider and by popping the white slider alone look at the difference all that does is it leaves the contrast and brings up the white now I'm not a fan of the contrast slider in Lightroom it's a very cheap and easy way to attain contrast because what it does for you is it will add contrast as Lightroom sees fit contrast is darker darks whiter whites and by doing the contrast slider all you're doing is the align con Lightroom to do that mix for you I want to be in control I don't want to add more dark into this I don't want to add more color in this particular image what I wanna do is make sure that the whites are popping and the darks are left behind now in this file all that I did to add contrast brought up the whites now look at this I want to show you something if you look at the before and after in this look at that change the only single change is one slider brought up the whites and for me that images already halfway home even more than that purely by affecting the change in one single slider that's a massive difference and gives you that bro look rich dark in contrast it started from the beginning I shot it while I composed it wall and coming into Lightroom that saves me work I merely lift the whites on it and the result is very very striking correct let's look at the next one oh yeah I have an elephant bull in mana pools okay this was shot again last light of day if I look at my settings I saw five thousand if two point eight one three twentieth of a second but what's the result again I have these beautiful dark tones if I look at my histogram or they'll notice that I have a lot of lack here in terms of exposure and and and especially the whites area so all I have to do let's lift that exposure a touch with the exposure slider just set myself up for a good white effect and going onto the whites immediately that image pops now look at that look at that tone on the elephant itself you can fix the whites the overexposed but on the tusks with a brush going and darken that but if I show you just what one slider did yet to give me that beautiful contrast rich color rich pro looking image look at this difference so purely by going lifting the exposure a touch and then jumping onto that white slider it makes all the difference I can't stress that enough what an important slider that is to use in order to attain this beautiful looking file and the ultimate results so let's look at the flip side of it let's look at what what we do if we do darks now I'm gonna explain to you how I use darks in in my edit the actual darker part of contrast now as I said I do not use contrast what I look for is three layers of contrast I use blacks in the basic panel then I jump on to turn curve and I use darks and shadows as well so those three methods those three sliders blacks darks and shadows those are the main ones that I use for contrast and it gives me the best result overall how do I use it or very clever blends so it depends on what the phile requires if I want to add heavy contrast layer over my file I'll jump straight to darks under basic under the tone curve so the dark slider under tone curves gives me heavy contrast a lot of contrast the middle amount of contrast would be the black slider under the basic panel name for linear contrast in other words thin line to contrast I use the shadow slider again back under the tone curve menu those three including white so I'll use whites and highlights and lights to overexpose them to work on the whiter parts of my frame and I used shadows and darks and blacks to work on the contrast and in tuning those ones that's how I set the contrast for my file so if I look at an image like this this image already has contrast and I love it I want to emphasize that a little bit how do I do that now remember I haven't touched a thing let's get into white balance I want to warm it up a little bit again setting that foundation is crucial for me so let's take it up to 6200 just above daylight it was shot early in the morning I'm gonna crop it a bit just to get that white section away at the top there and let's leave it like that now watch the difference it makes if I add contrast and whites in other words I'm taking my file and I'm adding contrast which is great because I'm giving it depth and I'm bringing out the white so it's almost like you're giving your image dimension the sense of dimension extremely important to remember so in this I'll do the blacks down a touch say minus 12 or so and then I've gone to the dark slider let's let's take that down to about minus 25 or so I know it seems dark but look at what happens when I bring in the whites when I stretch it out and give a dimension so let's say 2 there and to fix the whites on the chest all I have to do is go into the brush and take the highlights down go over that section a little bit with the highlights slider from from my brushes and that's really looking better we can do a touch over there and a touch over here now if I look at this in post my goodness what a difference now watch this if I show you what the two look like side-by-side look at that difference and again all I did is work on contrast I didn't add vibrance I didn't add saturation I didn't go play with funny colors and the RGB levels or anything like that I looked at what the far required and all I did was add what was necessary but seeming seeming a little bit flat in color and white balance I needed a bit more darkness and a bit more White's and just those changes makes a massive difference to my final result as you can clearly see in this image again I hope that makes sense and I hope you following along now let's get into rush work now this is where it all comes together beautifully I love brushes in my post-processing and I will show you here how exactly to put it together this is a photograph of a Nogami hair and touch it in Pantanal in the Pantanal in Brazil and what I'm gonna do is show you how to use brushes to emphasise this bird and to dark in the back bring out the front very simple look at this already I love the colors I love the tone I just want to work on bringing the bird out a little bit so what I'm going to do is I get onto the brush and let's darken the edges a bit so I'm gonna take the contrast in the black down make that nice and big and we're gonna just get rid of some of that the edges on the side there that maybe be maybe a little bit of distracting in terms of bringing this the focus and the emphasis onto my bird so that's that done I'm gonna add a new layer I often do various layers to get their message across so which is important we'll do that and there's a bit of a bright spot yet that I want to try and de-emphasize so I'll go new exposure down highlights down and just work on that particular spot there and that more or less gives us an idea of where you want to be now we've worked on the outside I want to bring the emphasis onto this beautiful bird through the use of clever use of brushes so I can add a slide for Nate day just to darken those edges even more and now I'm done before I going to brushes again I'll lift the whites a little bit to make those colors pop look at that difference I know exactly what I want to do and that's the important part in editing a file like this bring the whites up and now with the brushes I want emphasize that color I want to emphasize the color over here I want to bring out the eye a little bit more make that stand out so getting on to the brushes double-click lift the whites and color add a little bit of saturation to the wing itself and now going over that you can immediately see that difference just on the wing part of this bird the color part and we we can make that pop in that manner at a bit of saturation and now let's get onto the eye so I'll go zoom getting a little bit closer now for this I'll go really tight I'm gonna show you how to work and portraits in a little bit but new new brush take the exposure of take the whites up to about that level and just go in on the eye of this bird a beautiful stunning eye we want that eye to stand out new layer I don't want to fake that I just want to fake this part in the back here to bring that out and to bring the attention from the viewer into the eye and then the rest of the bird so just by doing that if you look at that eye now that I pops I've used brushes to darken the edges I've used brushes to pop the eye and I've used brushes to emphasize the colors on the wing now we can say cool let's add a bit of global vibrance to the image not too much say plus 20 or so and if we now go and look what the before and after look like if you look at what we've been able to do you then look at that difference so really popping in color the circuit the background is darker it emphasizes the bird yeah you can see a little bit flat in color not as vibrant the eye of this burden our stands are beautifully that lesson is more important you can see that crisp popping against that dark background and overall not too much work I jumped onto the brushes I knew what it is work that I wanted to do purely darken the edges it emphasizes the bird get on to the brushes emphasize specific features of the bird and the end result really does them speak for itself alright so another image that I love to do brush work on is a type of landscape scene so let's look at this this is a scene with Impala in a forest and mana pools now what I love about the scene is the potential of the scene you can see that there's some pockets of light that fall onto the Impala day and in the frontier and what I want to do is try and emphasize that both through global editing but also with brushes mana also has very often there's blue tinge to there to the backdrop and the kind of the distance that you get to see under the woodland that's another thing that I want to emphasize it so if I look at this image on a global scale I just want to straighten it attached to something like that so that to me looks pretty good now again brush to Ikea is important I can't fix this image globally and I understand that because Lobley will only get me so far but I need to use brushes cleverly in order to get the best effect out of this image but now look at what the histogram is telling me if you look at that history I'm you'll see that the histogram says there's a lot of potential here for whites and highlights and exposure the image is dark it's not wrong had I shot this in the field overexposed I would have lost the golden color in that light so I exposed for the light knowing that in post-processing I can emphasize that it's very important and that's why I said you have to shoot from the beginning from the field shoot for the final product know what it is that you want to achieve so now with the white slider will make a massive difference look at that just by introducing that it's made so much of that scene pop and if you look at the overall color now already it is looking good and I'm getting to where I want to be I'll increase the white balance to make it a bit warmer here and look at what a difference that makes so so far white balance white and that's given me a warmer feel and it's made that there the pockets of lies emphasize that now what I was the one who do is I just want to make this a bit bluer in the background here just to give that sense of mana early morning that blue light coming through and I'll go into the brush and we'll take the the temperature down now it's open up that brush a little bit and it's just in that background introduce that light there I know was there but it just didn't pick it up because of the initial white balance and color of the file and all I do with a brush is just working in nicely not on the impalas or any any of my subjects like that but just in that background we can get some of those blues and to pop and come out a little bit and in so doing look at the difference that makes to the file itself so I've not done that it gives dynamic it's not one warm tone there's warmth there's pockets of light and there's that blue misty background that comes through in the in the back make the whites up a little bit more we give it a touch of color and just that alone guys is my final product pretty much now again it's understanding what I did in the field to get the shot I knew what it is that I wanted to do right if I go and look at the before and after of this photograph I will show you that the effect is massive in terms of the color difference look at this difference right there so left the processed version right the photograph that I took raw in the field I had to photograph it that dark in the field because otherwise I would have lost the whites the the pockets of light would have been overexposed I shoot it darker in post process and I know what I wanted to do I bring up the whites I bring up the white balance warm it up a little bit more to give it some color and then with a brush I go into the back and I do something I couldn't have done globally I needed the brush for that so that's a clever use of brush work to emphasize specific features of your frame to give you that kind of a result but the overall image they're stunning beautiful I believe and it came out really really nice very small changes three changes in fact and it gives you a completely different image I didn't go through every slider to change I just did what I need to needed to and the result is really really stunning at least I think so and then the last photograph we're going to get into today will be one of a portrait how to do portraits and especially and specifically focus on the eyes now so many people get into a portrait of a cat and a picture but they don't work on the eyes enough and the Icefall flat and you lose the viewer that eyes are the windows to the soul it is an important part of post-processing now look at this this is my file and I can see there's some pretty light you don't want to emphasize the light in the back so there'll be a bit of a combination of a few things that we've touched on in this session and what I'm going to do is I want to emphasize the fall of light on the and I want to darken out the background but most importantly I want the eyes to stand up now watch this in editing let's make this a little bit warmer it will create a warm beautiful tone to this file I've taken it from five and a half thousand column into six and half thousand first change now I want to darken the edges a little bit let's do so globally with a vennett just to give me that darken effect so see that still looks natural I can't see the veneer never do ever NetWare you can actually see the round edges never looks great try to keep it natural now I've done the vanator around the edges and it looks a lot better what I want to do now is emphasize the fall of light across this eye so using that light that is there naturally so going to a brush and I'm gonna do White's up and exposure up a little bit make my brush nice and big soft edges and let's just brush it down like that and what I'm doing is I'm just exposing exposing and bringing that part of the cat to the front like this you can warm that change up a little bit as well and I'm gonna go into a new brush and I want to take some of the attention off of that ear that's just a little bit too bright so let's go exposure it down not too much and just take some of the attention away from the ear of that cat now another thing that I want to do is take some attention away from this bottom and I'll just go darken that out a little bit let's go new let's do another one right at the base there like this you can do the same here now guys as I said I'm not I'm not editing this to the final product I'm merely showing you how to shape it look at the difference when we get to the eyes so I'm gonna zoom in on the eyes nice and big so you can work effectively and take the brush double-click effect to zero all your icons exposure up and whites up and a little bit of saturation now watch this change all right so now I'm gonna go brush on that I avoid the dark areas just want the whites to pop you don't want to affect any change to the areas that are already black so let's say up until there that livermore less I'm gonna do one more new one not as much as the previous one but just working on this and portions of it now when I go out look at the change that that has made to this image I cannot go into my turn curve add a little bit more contrast to it add some shadows to the file and if I look at that the before and after be ready to impress the impressed oh look at the difference sorry look at the difference that there those effects have made to the overall image if you look at that that is a massive change okay that's a pro looking image very very very quick and effective small changes I looked at the image on the right and I figured the attention is not on the cat it's not on that eye it's not on the key part it's not capturing the viewer but the image has potential all I did is i darken the background and emphasize the eyes and the fall of light across the face simple steps understanding what is required for the task at hand and the result speaks for itself I'm sure you can see that so guys those are a few tips and tricks as I said right from the start focus on getting the shot right in the beginning if you overexposed something too much it's difficult to fix in the field you underexposed something too much it's difficult to fix it the same with incorrect or bad composition maybe you could have been lower maybe you could have had a better background and these kind of things are important to focus on right from the beginning in the and in the field and then most importantly in the field is think about the shot is there something you want to use is this something that has potential and then bringing your file into Lightroom changes that are the most important is contrast darker darks whiter whites using that to give your image dimension to give a depth and to make a colors pop and that already gives you a great platform without even having to go to vibrance or saturation sliders just by good effective use of white and blacks and post-processing then also what we looked at was the clever use of brushes brush work is extremely important it just sets your your foundation you're able to get in and do things like the eyes you're able to affect change with the background make it a forest background bluer versus arrest warmer and then also white balance and Jara do more than just the conventional blanket global white balance change but to use something like the graduated filter and separate the white balance and make the waters bluer or the grass greener and the sky bluer on top or in our case was the Jaguars and dark and warm tones on top and blue tones at the bottom a just gives you image just that edge extra oomph and vibrance and dynamic range and it just makes the viewer look at it for a little bit longer as that's my hints and tips for giving your images that pro look in wildlife photography I hope you've enjoyed this with me please check in for more videos and go out there and have fun experiment think about the shots and do clever smart easy post-processing my name is Marlon de TOI thank you for your time til next time [Music]

Channel: Sony Middle East and Africa

Views: 2,078

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Id: WikbAD1iFI8

Length: 32min 4sec (1924 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020