Last night @mccoy_wolf complimented my last editing video. I thought I could create another one.
While there are a ton of people that edit far better than me (I’d recommend the tutorials of @phlearn @photosincolor ) I also think for a quick edit the outcome is quite decent.
You can save these edits as presets in @lightroom and apply them to other photos… then you just need to tweak some settings…
This is usually the workflow behind the photos you see here…
Some general adjustments… then I finetune things a bit…
Hope you like it 😊
The music is Sinner Piano by The3amAssociation.
Thought it was fitting at 4:30 am 😀😀😀
You are probably asking, “where is the sun Ninja talked about in his last post?!?!”
My process on choosing a picture is usually really weird… On the morning walk in the forest, I have a gazillion amazing ideas and think of pictures, I could use along… but then I sit down and start to edit and all things change…
Here is the workflow that was behind the previous shot… As you can see… I start editing an easy to edit picture and got the idea that I could post a picture together with Hadez as I had not done that in a while…
I saved the settings of the first picture, used and fine-tuned them on the second… I did not find a crop (cutting the picture) that I was satisfied with… so I moved to the next picture using the updated settings…
The results did not make me happy (I use @media.storage for pictures that do not fit here) and before fine-tuning colors, which is the last thing I do, I switched to head shots and was happy with it.
As explained in the previous post. RAW files are meant to be edited.
Here is what I do… I like to spread out the Histogram a bit… raising exposure, lowering lights, raising shadows… but not too much, I do not want HDR 😁
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Then I do a quickfix to get off the coat color cast by reducing vibrance and giving back some saturation… in the end I also turn dowsn saturation of orange, yellow and green and raise their lightness…
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I reduce clarity (brining it back later with radial mask) and work the tone curves to give contrast.
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Then go to HSL and turn orange and yellow to red and green to green to tone the weird brown head colors. They’d look greenish otherwise.
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Then I add a slight vignette in color priority mode.
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Under camera calibration I do some changes that fit my a6000 + SEL50F18 (slightly red cast) and tone hues + whitebalance
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The mist important step are radial filters to lead the eye to Ninja.. slightly increased saturation, clarity, sharpness on Ninja and reverse outside of him… these are slight changes but the brain notices it.
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That is it… takes 2 min to adjust if you use a preset. Here I spent 10… but did a sloppy job on chromatic abberation
When Ninja is running very happy towards me, he will either waggle his head to the left and right or do a little excited jump just like seen here. It warms my heart every time I see it…
How does your dog express happiness?
Yesterday I asked if anyone – including YOU! Haha – knew a manufacture for dog collars… 80 comments without a single answer. I’d be very thankful for some suggestions.
You have probably seen videos of Huskies talking. They are communicative and likes to talk. Akiak, my previous Husky, loved it… we could talk for minutes and he seemed to enjoy it.
Ninja however was completely silent during the first 2 years. No barking, no howling, no talking… Eventually I noticed when I tease him with commands, that he would make a very decent “growling” sound… I used rewards to make him bark on command.
I recall how difficult it was… his “growling complaint” when I was teasing him happened once maybe every couple of days and it was difficult to properly reward him for it.
Once Ninja realized that I was not mad at him got “talking back”, I was able to teach a “friendly growl” on command. I am not sure if it serves a purpose or not… initially, he would not bark or growl and I think this is a matter of respect… Even now, I need to encourage Ninja a few times, before he starts to growl/bark.
You can see that he often licks his snout, it is to appease me “This is not serious; we are just having fun… right?”
On a side note:
We lost our collar at our last stay in Switzerland. Can anyone recommend a good manufacture? We usually have some custom made collar made of soft leather that can easily be pulled over his head. The one used in the video is a bit too long and can hit Ninjas teeth. We need a new one!
As I was sitting at the riverside, taking pictures of Ninja he laid down a few steps away… He looked at me… so regal, so sovereign and I felt like having the most beautiful companion in the world… isn’t he amazing? He stood up and was eagerly awaiting a command.
You know how it is.. you move a bit here and there… always trying to get the best composition for your picture and when you are done you are no longer certain it was a good idea to put leash and harness aside. Especially for these cases I taught him to find the leash, since I often put his harness and leash aside so they won’t disturb the pictures. Was not so easy to teach Ninja how to look for the leash, because he did not understand the „point“ of it…
At first I put the leash next to him… and as soon as he looked into the direction I gave him a reward…
After a bit he understood, that I meant the leash… and not just turn your head left or right… (this is important)
I moved the leash around and only rewarded him when he moved towards the leash…
Finally I only rewarded, when his muzzle touched the leash…
To turn this into a „fun“ task I always let him search for the leash before going outside…
This is why he still enjoys looking for the „boring“ leash, it is simply conditioned very positively…
Positionierung … Dachte ich zeige mal an 2 Beispielen wie das mit dem positionieren von Ninja funktioniert. An der 2. Stelle sieht man schön, wie Ninja schon gleich an die Position des Sonnenstrahlen läuft und dann ist er verwirrt, weil ich ihn woanders hinschicke, weil das normalerweise genau der Ort ist an dem ich ihn haben will. grin emoticon
Positioning … Thought I’d show 2 examples how positioning Ninja works. At the second location you can see how Ninja moves right into the sun rays. Then he remains a bit irritated since I want to move him elsewhere. He knows it is usually exactly where I’d want him to be.
(an attempt at English below, haha)
Ninja ist ja ein waschechter Arbeitslinienhund. Seltsamerweise gibt es da viele Vorurteile. Diese Hunde sind so hibbelig, die wollen nur „Laufen, laufen, laufen“…
Ich finde es ist ganz wichtig, dass ein Hund sich entspannen kann. Dazu habe ich Ninja „Peng!“ beigebracht.
Steht uns eine lange Fahrt im Zug bevor gibt es ein „Peng!“ und Ninja legt sich hin und entspannt / schläft stundenlang. Er nutzt, wie das jeder gute Arbeitslinienhund können sollte, solche Phasen um Kraft zu tanken.
Bei Ninjas Vorgänger habe ich schon bemerkt wie wichtig es ist seinem Hund dies beizubringen.
Restaurant, Warten am Bahnhof, Auf den Füßen von Fremden In der gerammelt vollen S-Bahn oder beim Tierarzt reicht ein (oder 2 🙂 ) „Peng!“ und er legt sich ab.
Es folgen Kommentare wie: „Ich wusste gar nicht dass sie einen Hund dabei haben!“, „Ist das ein Therapiehund?“, „Wow, noch nie so einen entspannten Hund kennengelernt!“
Dieses Video war etwa 10 Minuten nach dem Verlassen des Hauses aufgenommen. Ninja war also nicht ausgepowert. Im Gegenteil am 25.12 war Weihnachten und wir waren eher weniger als sonst unterwegs, dennoch nutzt Ninja die Gunst der Stunde für ein Schläfchen!
Ninja is a real working line dog. Oddly enough there are many prejudices about these dogs. They are so jumpy, only want to „Tun, run run“… Personally I find it very important, that a dog knows how to relax. This is why I taught him „Bang!“.
If there is a long travel by train, I’ll say „Bang!“ and Ninja will lay down, relax or sleep and even for hours. He takes advantage, like any good working line dog should be able to, of the moment to gather strength.
I taught this also Ninjas predecessor Aki, who was also a working line dog,
No matter where… restaurant, waiting at the train station, top of the feet of strangers in a massively crowded public transport, at the vet … there is only one (haha, or 2 🙂 ) „Bang!“ and he’ll relax / sleep.
People often comment:“Oh, I did not notice that you had a dog with you!“, „Is this a therapy dog?“, „Wow, I’ve never seen such a relaxed dog!“
This video has been taken about 10 minutes after leaving the house. Ninja wasn’t powered out. On the contrary, the day before was christmas and we did not have a long walk then. Nevertheless Ninja takes the opportunity to take a nap.
Wie gut sozial verträglich das Rudel von Esther Binnefeld, die wir am Wochenende besucht haben, ist lässt sich hier schön sehen. Selbst in unserer Gassirunde würde solches füttern zu Streits führen.
Man beachte wie die Huskys jeden am Tor begrüßen, dort stand ich am Vortag als ich das Ninja-Video gemacht habe. Jetzt kann man besser sehen wie viele Hunde um einen herumwuseln und weshalb es so schwer war die Kamera ruhig zu halten 😀
How social Esther Binnefelds Huskys, where we cvisited last week end, is clearly visible here. Even in our Packwalk feeding like this would result in quarrels.
Also you may notice the huskys at the entrance. thsi is where I stood yesterday, trying to film Ninjas reintroduction to his pack after 3 years. Maybe you realize now why it was so difficult to hold the camera still 😀
