How would you salvage this bear photo?

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DBalaur

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I have a batch of very contrasty backlit grizzly photos and want to see how I should salvage them. It was not possible to move closer or change my shooting direction for a better shot. Can I still salvage this them or should I just toss them to the bin? If so, how should I go about editing it? Lift the shadows to show more detail of the bear and the salmon, or lean into the high contrast look/black and white? This was quite literally my first grizzly bear ever so I do not have a lot of experience on what people look for in "good" bear photos.
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As I've never seen a bear – koalas don't count – I'd treasure this photo if it were mine.
  • Duplicate the photo, and keep the original safe.
  • Crop (quite severely)…
    • top: Trim off the overexposed river, leaving only that which has some detail (above bear).
    • bottom: Delete the foreground, leaving the gull and some of its reflection.
    • left: Trim off around ⅔ of the rocks behind the bear's backside.
    • right: No change.
  • Play with the sliders in your preferred photo app (LrC, Ps, etc.)…
    • Move the sliders far left (darker, etc.) or far right (brighter, etc.).
    • Note the effect of changing brightness, saturation, clarity, colour…
    • Usually, one won't opt to leave the sliders at their extremes, but it's a good way to judge effects.
That's it for a start. Enjoy!

One day I might see a bear.

… David
 
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Personally, I would not lighten the shadows, as I like the dramatic, backlit look. However, I would try to darken the highlights IF you have a raw file to work from. If you only have the camera JPEG, then nothing really you can do about that. Also maybe crop horizontal with the bear in the upper portion, which will eliminate the worst part of the blownout highlights at top.
 
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Thank you both for chiming in. Here is the first attempt: nothing too extreme yet, but I did add a bit of yellow to the highlight. I was really tempted to lift the shadows but will try to stay away from it. I will keep editing and sharing this photo since it is the one I started the thread with. However, if the consensus is heavy cropping to remove the top part, I will work with the horizontal photos and discard the vertical ones.

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Crop severely as suggested…select background and bring down highlights and maybe exposure as well. Select bear and adjust as necessary. The contrast darker subject idea is good…but bear probably still needs some exposure and shadows even so.
 
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DBalaur said:
Thanks all. 3 new calls for lifting the shadow, so that is what I did.

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I think the latest edit you posted here is very good, considering the harsh backlighting you were dealing with. Just enough shadow enhancement so as to avoid making it unrealistic. I like the rocks and the gull. You should be proud of this image for your first bear experience. A lot of us are totally obsessed with getting perfect light and no interfering objects like branches, leaves and the like. But as a noted wildlife and nature photographer friend of mine from Canada has said to me and others, “Hey, sometimes shadows, interfering branches and leaves happen”.
 
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Post 10 is better and I agree with Charles on the 2 clone areas. With the backlight you’re just not going to get a decent final shot if the shadows are brought up enough to provide bear detail…so I would go for the dramatic backlit processing and probably not bring up the shadows much more.
 
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On that first photo I would convert it to a high key black and white image. It's already nearly a silhouette and high key. Convert to black and white, boost contrast a little, back off shadows, boost highlights and try to squeeze lemonade from lemons.
 
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jeffnles1 said:
On that first photo I would convert it to a high key black and white image. It's already nearly a silhouette and high key. Convert to black and white, boost contrast a little, back off shadows, boost highlights and try to squeeze lemonade from lemons.
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I honestly really like experimenting more with B&W photography, but I am still lacking any foundation in that style. Also followed @Charles Loy suggestion on removing the pebble by the snout to make the silhouette even clearer. I don't care about editing the gull out - there are even more of them in other shots.
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DBalaur said:
I honestly really like experimenting more with B&W photography, but I am still lacking any foundation in that style. Also followed @Charles Loy suggestion on removing the pebble by the snout to make the silhouette even clearer. I don't care about editing the gull out - there are even more of them in other shots.
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Yes, this is more what I was talking about. I like this. The gull doesn't bother me other than its feet are cropped out. The one with the full gull is where I would start with the high key shot (or you could go really dark and moody low key but this scene presents itself more high key to my eye). The gull is part of the environment and gives both a sense of scale (most of us know how big a gull is) for the bear and also a sense of place where this was taken as well as the behavior of the gulls hanging around hoping for scraps from the feeding bears.

I like this treatment.

Jeff
 
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Woody Meristem said:
Not being a fan of b/w, I much prefer the last color image you posted, it look's much like we'd have seen with our eyes had we been there-- our eyes normally have much more dynamic range than our came
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Thanks for the input. I am happy to keep both styles for the time being. It seems like we are at a point where there is not much left to push in either direction without overdoing it. I will edit the pebble near the snout in the color image as I did with the B&W version.

jeffnles1 said:
Yes, this is more what I was talking about. I like this. The gull doesn't bother me other than its feet are cropped out. The one with the full gull is where I would start with the high key shot (or you could go really dark and moody low key but this scene presents itself more high key to my eye). The gull is part of the environment and gives both a sense of scale (most of us know how big a gull is) for the bear and also a sense of place where this was taken as well as the behavior of the gulls hanging around hoping for scraps from the feeding bears.

I like this treatment.

Jeff
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Good point on the gull, I will redo the crop to include the whole gull like in previous attempts.
 
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