Chester Zoo in sunlight and 'moonlight'

[alanhill]

The weather was funny yesterday. I planned some bird photography in Lancashire, but two miles from my house I hit fog. I drove for almost 40 miles between thicker and thinner patches before the sun broke through as I neared Chester. So I ended up at the Zoo with my D70, 300mm lens & monopod.
I was relieved to find the sunlight, but it was harsh and the angle was low so there were problems. The easy way to shoot was to remember the old instruction to keep the sun behind you.

Colombian black spider monkey
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v322/alanhill/Zoos2007/Chester09_062.jpg

Princess of Wales parakeet
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v322/alanhill/Zoos2007/Chester09_338.jpg

The jaguar house has a large enclosure which is open fronted and well planted: it looks wonderful for photography. But Rich can confirm that the jags never show when the light is good. Yesterday the light was slanting across the enclosure creating a lot of contrast - so they were quite active :rolleyes: The female was the first to show herself, she even paused for a moment in a shaft of sunlight. These shots needed some care in CS2 to control the contrast.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v322/alanhill/Zoos2007/Chester09_242.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v322/alanhill/Zoos2007/Chester09_253.jpg

The male semed to prefer the shadows, but I managed a couple of shots.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v322/alanhill/Zoos2007/Chester09_260.jpg

The next shot in the sequence had too much contrast because his white muzzle was in a patch of sunlight.
I was going to give up on it when I remembered the old movie trick for shooting 'moonlit' scenes. Why not reduce the colour temperature to give a blue tone, desaturate the colours, grossly underexpose and tone down any stray highlights?
Voila! An instant moonlit jaguar!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v322/alanhill/Zoos2007/Chester09_261MOONLIGHT.jpg

Cheating of course, but an interesting way to mistreat an image.

Alan

[squidfish]

Hi Alan

Love that first monkey shot some great eye contact there.

Looks like the Chester jaguar was well on the prowl :)

Cheers

Rich

[benny]

Hey alan,

The moonlight trick is cool. Perhaps we can try it on Catfishes in the tank too?

Cheers,

[alanhill]

Invisible cats? Why not? The technique isn't to be taken too seriously (although it was used a lot in classic Hollywood films) - but what's the point in having all these facilities in Photoshop if you don't try them out occasionally?
Incidentally there is supposed to be something similar in Fishbase, where you can change the photo to show what the fish would look like at a depth of 20 metres (or some such figure). I presume that it removes all the red and most of the green and yellow, leaving a much darker image with some blue tones visible - but I can never get it to work.

Alan