Musk Ox family portrait

[Tin Man Lee]

This is a dream come true-- to photograph the musk ox baby.
Have you ever watched the BBC Frozen Planet video of a musk ox baby being captured
by a pack of arctic wolves? All members of the musk oxen herd immediately lined up and grouped into a defense formation, and charged right into the arctic wolves, and finally rescued their baby. Since then I have fallen in love with this prehistoric animal. We hiked a mile in the tundra in strong wind near the famous Alaska Dalton Highway, thru ankle deep ice-cold water to reach them. What a day! Special thanks to our tour leader Hugh Rose who tried his best to make sure we got to see them and fulfilled my dream.

Taken with a Canon 1DX, Canon 500mm f4, 1.4xIII converter, RRS TVC 33 tripod, ISO 800, f/6.3, 1/320s.

[Marina Scarr]

You already know how I feel about this image, Tin Man. It is simply over the top. Love the story, and the environment in this one is simply amazing, as is your post processing. It almost feels as though they are real. If I were you, I would be submitting this one to contests. Aside from the wonderful capture, I am so glad that you were able to realize one of your dreams!!!

[Morkel Erasmus]

This is great Tin Man. An experience to treasure I am sure! :5
Look & feel are great. Nice framing and earthy tones. I am wondering about toning down overall brightness just a tad through a luminosity mask?

[Andrew Merwin]

Wonderful story & a superlative image to go with it. I think I see the tip of a horn between the female & the baby ox. Is the female's head draped over the male's left horn? TFS this marvelous image.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Tin Man,
like the image and the story behind it.
I think for this new Hightech Toy 1DX IQ is not "that" great.
Overall i would tone down the quarter tones.
Colors - cannot say, please reup with an embedded color profile.

TFS Andreas

[Steve Uffman]

Marvelous image...can image that being a dream.....thanks for sharing

[Jamie Douglas]

Soooooo jealous this is freakin awesome. I would love to photograph Ox one day. Can you message me the tour comp details? Once my car gets a little older and I am less bothered about putting serious miles on the clock I will for sure make the drive to Alaska.

Fantastic tundra colours and love the visible eyes. I can't help but think the image needs a little something to make it pop though.

Jamie

[Rachel Hollander]

Congrats on achieving one of your dream images. Looks like the effort was worth it and thanks for the bg story. I like the brown tones to this and the comp works well. Some of the highlights have lost a slight amount of detail that I too think can be recovered with a luminosity mask.

TFS,
Rachel

[Tin Man Lee]

Thanks all for your kind comments. It was indeed an amazing moment to witness them in the wild. For the quality of the image, yea, I don't know why it looks grainy and the color was off. It certainly looks better in CS6 in my computer. One possibility may be that when I saved it as a jpeg and reduced the file size to <200kb, it said the quality was only around 50% or less I don't quite remember. Any help will be appreciated.

[Tom Graham]

"...and the color was off."
I think it is not sRGB color profile
Tom