© 2013 Thousand Word Images by Dustin Abbott

This is the third in a series of images for the week from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. I saw this shot of a few orangutans and it cracked me up. Typical couple – he is cracking a joke (thinking he is hilarious), and she has her hand to her head in a grimace…I think a headache is coming on! Processing technique #3: Shoot in RAW, then use the highlight and shadow sliders in LR Best case scenario – always shoot in great, diffused, flattering light. But in the real world we don’t always get that opportunity. Here the light was very harsh. Middle of the day, with blown out highlights and deep shadows. This image was almost like split lighting. Two quick actions helped this. 1) I used the highlight slider in Lightroom 4 and pulled it most of the way down. This reduced the bright highlights. 2) I used the shadows slider to pull up lost detail in the shadows, balancing the lighting. I brought shadows up to 100%. A couple of final notes – I always shoot in RAW because it captures so much more information that can be used in shots like this in post. A good quality sensor helps – more dynamic range means there is more highlights and shadows that can be recovered.

Technical info: Canon EOS Canon EF 70-300L, Hoya Circular Polarizer, Processed in Adobe Lightroom 4

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