Black Rhino in first light

[Shreyas Mantri]

Hello All,
This photo was made at the Chudop waterhole in the Namutoni area of Etosha. I had just parked the car and found this guy walking straight to the waterhole at a quick pace. I snagged a few shots when he slowed down a bit to investigate the safety at the waterhole.

Canon 7D, 300mm II + 2.0x III, @ 600mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/160s, comp. +1/3
Comments welcome!

Shreyas

[Brendon Cremer]

Great image, nice comp, pose and great OOF BG, my first impression of the actual rhino are that it is lacking a little punch maybe needs a little more in the mid tones and perhaps a little more contrast, i think this may be due to a little too much shadow recovery.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Shreyas, nice looking Rhino, but I agree with Brendon, this 'Big Old Unit' needs depth and prominence which I think you have lost within the RAW conversion. It would be good to post a copy (ableit a jpeg) of the RAW without anything applied, as we can then make some observations & feedback to hopefully move things along. I would also suggest in upping your ISO next time, as 1/160 I feel is a little slow to capture this as it starts to move. I like the position within frame, but would be tempted to crop the tree right on the LH edge and add say a 2 degree CCW rotation. I also like the setting and the OOF rocks are just about right IMHO, not to be distraction, but to offer the viewer a good idea to the habitat.

Having had a play, this image has a lot of potential as this shows you have the detail and clarity, it just needs some tweaks.

Look forward to more.

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Nice low pov and the comp works very well though I agree it needs some ccw rotation. Good suggestions above for improving both in the field and in pp.

TFS,
Rachel

[Rudi van den Heever]

Great light and like the inclusion of the environment! Ditto Brendon and Steve about the rhino lacking a little bit of umfff! Still a great capture!:w3

[Shreyas Mantri]

Thanks all for the suggestions.

@Brendon, true for the shadow recovery, which I did on the chest area. I added some tonal contrast and bit of saturation to the frame.
@Steve, here's the unedited jpg (I was shooting both RAW + jpg). Look forward to the analysis! Right after a couple of these shots, I moved the ISO to 640 and got some better action results.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Shreyas, firstly may I ask, why do you shoot Raw & jpg, do you send people the jpgs when you are away?

OK, just looking at it, you can get quite a good WB setting to start off with just above the right nostril that's if you use LR, it's almost 50, 50, 50 and therefore the image has a more yellow look to it rather than red, but then it then depends on things like time of day ad what you want the overall look to be. In doing so the overall environment is a little softer and the subject has a bit more depth and character to it. I feel you worried about the habitat and the subject has lost out, you can always double process to get the result you want, if you think it's not working out. Obviously I am working with a compressed sRGB file and that in itself tricky and also there are some issues of blue coming through, but overall the image I think has all the info there, you just need to look at extracting various parts to achieve your goal. sadly all the setting do not transfer otherwise I might have given you some pointers to start with. I get the impression it was around late afternoon? sharpness is there and i don't have any issues with the OP on that score.

I won't do a RP as there are to many variables, unless you get stuck, but it's not I feel a good reflection on what the reworked RAW would give.

cheers
Steve

[Shreyas Mantri]

Steve, I sometimes shoot RAW + jpgs as its easy to review them in the field, and I don't use LR.
Appreciate your info on the PP.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Shreyas, not quite sure what the difference is for editing in the field between RAW & Jpeg, however...

My worry about doing that is:
- Loss of batter power due to editing
- You can only use the screen for comp & histogram, nothing more, would never trust the screen for colour
- Having both takes up valuable card space
- Looses time writing to the card
- Most important to me, if you work on a JPG you are throwing away so much valuable information contained in the RAW.

[Shreyas Mantri]

Hi Shreyas, not quite sure what the difference is for editing in the field between RAW & Jpeg, however...


Agree with all, but like I said, I use jpgs for review just to have initial impressions, not editing. And 64 GB cards come in handy for space! If am anticipating some quick action, I switch to RAW only for quicker writing.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Shreyas
like the capture of this species of Etosha , always good to see they still there .
Like the inclusion of the environment and the composition of the image.

Good suggestions made by Steve and Brendon, would like to echo them.
Still a nice shot , though.

TFS Andreas

[Morkel Erasmus]

Sorry for being late to this one, Shreyas. Lots of great discussion thus far, which I won't clutter by rehashing what's been said by Steve and others.
I was in the mood to play around so I took a stab at your JPG posted here...as Steve said working up the RAW from scratch is ideal.

What do you think of this?

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Shreyas,
I like the position and evirons......endless tweak possibilities and I don't even mind the soft look to the OP but some great suggestions above to improve a very nice image.

[Shreyas Mantri]

Thanks Roman!

@Morkel, thanks for your input and I do like the punch up on the Rhino. I however am very fond of the morning light colors from my OP that I got from luminosity adjustments, and a combination with that would work great, IMO! One of these days I'll pick the CR2 again and process it again as per the suggestions made. Also have a couple more from the series and will be posting them as well.
Thx