What’s wrong with this picture?

This is a southern tamandua, or lesser ant eater, that I photographed in the Nashville Zoo. Although the background tree adds some semblance of a real and natural environment, it doesn’t look good. In addition, the slightly curved branch in the upper right quadrant of the picture is visually annoying. Any time there is a strong, graphic element in front of or behind a subject that is not part that subject, it is almost always distracting.

In addition, the horizontal branch on which the tamandua is walking is supported by a manmade upright. That doesn’t look natural at all.

The picture on the next page shows the remarkable improvement that occurred simply by replacing the background. In the process, I eliminated the distracting branch as well as the unnatural support for the horizontal branch.

The biggest challenge in replacing the background, of course, was dealing with the fine hair, particularly on the animal’s back and tail. To my advantage, in the original shot, the green leaves in the background were almost 100% adjacent to the periphery of the tamandua. That allowed me to substitute another background without having to make a precise selection. This is the same technique I used for the lemur on page 16.

I opened the new background -- a shot taken in the Pantanal region of Brazil which is the native environment -- and cloned from one picture to another. In other words, I cloned the new background behind the animal. I reduced the size of the clone tool when I worked carefully at the edge of the hair. The new texture, color, and detail of the new background blended perfectly with the old background because they were so close in color. §