Monday in Nature, December 31, 2018

Thank you, Mary. Your edit shows that there is detail available on the right side background which can be retrieved. This is of course even more effective in the RAW file. One thing is, improving shadow details also makes the background vegetation more prominent which starts competing for attention to some extent. At what point, this becomes distracting is a good question. That is something I had to consider a lot when editing the photo, because in the original image, the vegetation was quite bright.

I see your point. Overall the original looks underexposed on my monitor with blocked shadows to the left. Casually-applied shadow-highlight pass reveals lovely details that were hidden in darkness but also, unfortunately, revealed the background that you would prefer to not emphasize. Think a solution can be to select the giraffe to brighten and leave everything else untouched? Selective enhancement (not adding or taking elements away) is acceptable under PSA nature rule.

I see your point. Overall the original look unexposed on my monitor with blocked shadows on the left. Casually-applied shadow-highlight pass reveals lovely details that were hidden in darkness but also, unfortunately, revealed the distraction that you would prefer not emphasize. Think a solution can be to select the giraffe to brighten and leave everything else untouched? Selective enhancement is acceptable under PSA nature rule.

Thanks. I in fact did some selective adjustment on just the giraffe's face in the posted photo. One issue might be, all my edits were done under room lighting on a macbook pro. Given the sharp contrast of this image, may be the edits should be done on a calibrated monitor to achieve correct treatment of the shadow areas. I have a factory calibrated monitor which I can use to revisit this image. It's such a great opportunity to learn by discussing with you guys.

Monitors vary. Some people insist on calibrating their monitors periodically. I am thankful my NEC monitors seem to do well without the annoyance of calibration. I tried it once on a laptop years ago and the monitor was messed up forever. I am sure it was my fault. :(

I agree, monitors can be finicky. If I am unsure of the post processing and what I am seeing on the monitor, I sometimes print a small test image in my Canon inkjet printer to see if the contrast looks correct.