Trunk Wrestling

[Rachel Hollander]

I have a whole series of these desert elephants pushing and pulling each other. I like the raised foot here and the HAs. Taken in Damaraland, Namibia in August 2012.

Canon 5D3
70-200 II @ 160mm
1/1000
f7.1
ISO 800
EC +.33
HH from safari vehicle, cropped for comp, levels, curves, selective color adjustments and sharpened in CS5.

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel


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[Jonathan Ashton]

Nice shot and composed well, I like the exposure and the dust by the feet. I cannot help but feel however that the elephants are a little over-sharpened.

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

This is a wonderful image Rachel! Lot of action and drama with good composition. The sharpness looks OK to me on my monitor. I like the raised foot and intertwined trunks.

[Robert Amoruso]

Rachel,

I would suggest more of a pano crop - with cropping from to and bottom. The elephants tangling looks great and needs to be accentuated with a tighter crop.

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Rachel,

The foot up looks great. I as well have the feeling of a bit over sharpened, but not so sure. Late over here. I like the comp and dust. I might would crop a bit of the foreground that the bushes are gone and maybe just a tiny bit of the top. Pano looks quite good, like Robert suggested.
I put up two sheets of paper on my screen just for my fun :tinysmile_shy_t:

Wish you A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year :wave:

Ciao
Anette

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Rachel, I'm with Robert on trying the pano, that was my first impression. I think Anette raise a good point about you trying the highly tech use of two pieces of paper, it does work. In the early days, in a previous life we used two card right angles and framed the prints on how we wanted to see them cropped!!! Still works.

I like the clash, trunks entwined and the dust adds interest. The over shaped look could be the use of addition Curves or Selective, by adding black? I will speak to Santa for you regarding a quick crash course on sharpening. :w3

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks all for the comments and suggestions. The pano comp is a good one but this is already a pretty substanial crop for me (this is probably about 60-70% of ff) so I'm not sure that IQ will hold up. Because of the crop I applied an extra round of sharpening, guess it was a bit too much for some.

Thanks again,
Rachel

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Rachel,
Late to the party but I do like the action. Good suggestions above but I have seen your response so might just take the bit off the bottom. Yeah.....a bit over sharpened but an easy tweak.

[Stan Cunningham]

Nice action shot, and you were close for a 160 on a full frame.
Is it over sharpened or did you use a lot of clarity, I have a real tendency to do that.

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Roman and Stan. Stan - I think I applied an extra round of sharpening because of the larger crop (for me) and it was too much.

Thanks again all,
Rachel

[Morkel Erasmus]

Loving the action here Rachel...
Good advice already given!

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks, I forgot to come back to this one. Here's a repost with a slightly different crop. The IQ doesn't hold up to a pano crop I like. This also has less sharpening.

Thanks again,
Rachel