Buffalo Pano

[Andreas Liedmann]

Taken the image in Babwata NP in Northern Namibia, a quite remote area.The biggest herd of about 300 animals, quite impressive to watch and listen to.

Canon EOS 1D MK IV
EF 70-200 IS L at 200 mm
HH

F8 / 1/320 sec / ISO 500

Processed in RPP + PS ; double raw processing to get the dynamic range ; cropped to pano for composition

Hope you like it, C&C welcome

TFW Andreas

[Tom Graham]

Buffalo are so funny, they seem to like looking at you as much as you at them.
I'd darken the sky to start with.
Tom

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Andreas's, I like the image and the pano format works well with this image. Good call on the way to process the image, however ACR (and you can do this with LR, but not tried it) failing that, ACR is by far the best route to chose when doing this, not sure if that's the way you went, however it worked so, well done. Personally I would have preferred the tree off-set to one side, but then you may not have achieved what you wanted to capture. I might be tempted to compress the Levels a fraction more i.e. 8, 252, drop some of the Blue in the herd and perhaps darken the sky a wee bit more, ND filter would have been good here. Is it dust from the heard that gives the illusion of a slight haze in the BKG? If you have applied any sharpening to the trees/bushes in the BKG I might ease off too, although if you haven't, then it might just be as shot.:S3:


I'd darken the sky to start with.
What else would you suggest Tom? :S3:

TFS
Steve

[Andreas Liedmann]

HI Steve and Tom , thanks for watching.
Steve - i do not use ACR , just use RPP in 95% of my images.(RAW PHOTO PROCESSOR). It was not really possible to get a different comp, to the left only loose standing buffalos , to the right buffalos partly covered by shrub. What to do?, solution was this comp with tree in the middle, not ideal i know !!
The haze in the BG is the slowly settling dust , the herd was running and then stopping all of a sudden, due to cars parked where they wanted to cross .In the raw the dust is a bit more visible but kind of distracting , so i tried to get rid of it with usm.

Tried to improve with your suggestions, took it up a notch, thanks.
Andreas

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Andreas, that's fine, as I said, options on moving left or right might not always be possible, plus you can lose the shot too.

If you let me know when you venture to ACR I can explain the way I was suggesting, as to type would take to long and a call is easier as I have just done with another member. :bg3:

Like the RP. :cheers:

[Andreas Liedmann]

Steve - you only have to look in my posts in the beginning , where all the technical stuff is explained.

ACR - is clear
RPP - Raw Photo Processor
DPP - clear ,too

The cubs has been processed in ACR, because i could not get a decent color balance to start with.IF so i move to another converter, instead of correcting color heavily , which i find sometimes very difficult.
So far , i get mostly quite good coments on my images ,so i stickwith that combination.

But if you wish , i give you a wink.

Cheers Andreas

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Andreas - nice that you got them all to line up for you:bg3:. The pano crop works well. I would open up the midtones in the buffalo a little bit and the fg looks just a tad oversharpened to me.

TFS,
Rachel

[Morkel Erasmus]

I like the composition very much with the line of buffalo at the bottom, framed by the tree on top and the nice sky in the background.
Repost takes it up a notch, Andreas.
:5

[Morkel Erasmus]

Couldn't help myself :e3:w3
What do you think...?

[Ken Watkins]

Andreas,

Firstly is Babatwa what we used to know as Caprivi Strip?

Both of your posts are nice especially given the fact that it is nearly impossible to get a "tidy" herd shot, not to sure that I see any major differences between them.

I do however quite like Morkel's re-post especially as it seems to be straightforward.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hey Morkel, nice job on B/W !! Excellent detail in the buffs.

Ken - Caprivi is now called Babwata NP,image taken in Buffalo section, located opposite to Mahango GR. other side of the river rugged area.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Andreas, I like the line-up of the buffalo and the comp too. In the colour version I find my eyes being drawn to the blue in the sky, but in Morkel's B&W repost I find I am immediately drawn to the herd. Might be worth while to create a B&W as an alternate to your original colour version.

[Marina Scarr]

Really love what you have done here and good thinking on blending the 2 images. When I first saw it, I thought now how did he do that? The B&W isn't working as well for me and it looks as though there may be a magenta cast. I think that I like your repost the best, but I would crop a little from the left to eliminate that partial buffalo calf. The pano format really works well!

[Steve Canuel]

Like your repost and also Morkel's B/W version. A tighter crop to the top of the bushes would give you a nice header photo for your website if you have one. Lots of options on where to crop the edges, I might try just behind the one facing towards the middle on the left (as viewed) and between the third and fourth buffs on the right. That would give you two buffs on the ends looking towards center.