Technique

Ben Hall tells us how he prepared

this intimate winter portrait of a

mountainhare forprinting

Oneofmyfavourite

locationsforwildlife

photographyis theDark

PeakareaofthePeakDistrict

NationalPark.Thereis a

barrenbeautytothispartof

theworldandtheexpansive

moorlandsarehometoa

varietyofwildlife.I spend

Behind the

print

3

With the adjustment brush

I selected the hare. I then

applied +10 of clarity for more

denition and texture to the fur

4

As the colour temperature

was slightly warm for a

wintry shot, I took it down, for

a more neutral colour balance

2

To give the snowakes more

impact I used the grad lter

to up the sky contrast a tad

1

I started by adjusting the

contrast by setting the white

and black point

BenHall

Ben Hall is one of the

UK’s leading wildlife

photographers with many

international awards to

his name. His images are

widely published

throughout the world, he has co-authored

two books and runs photography

workshops in the UK and overseas.

1 Remove dust spots
I noticed a couple of small dust spots in the
sky area of the image. To get rid of these I
used the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom. It is
a simple tool to use but doesn’t always work
rst time so I had to move the sample area
until I achieved the desired result.

2 Crop for negative space

I cropped just a small amount from the

left-hand side to increase the negative space

in front of the hare. Negative space is an

effective compositional tool which can create

a feeling of context and isolation, perfect for

an image such as this.

(^3) Resize
Normally at this stage I would add a small
amount of vibrance to give the colours a
little bit more punch. However, since this
image is almost devoid of colour I simply
resized my image to the exact dimensions
of the print at 300dpi in Photoshop.
PREPARING FOR PRINTING