Nine-banded Armadillo

[Nancy Bell]

I spend so much time in the OOTB forum that I am afraid I have forgotten how to deal with images of real animals :Whoa!:. I found this armadillo snuffling in the dry leaf litter in Oklahoma. I took several conventional side-view images and then the armadillo simply jumped up in the air, landed and ran towards me! I quickly got a few images as he practically ran through my feet into a nearby thicket. This is part of one of those images looking down on the armadillo. I wanted to highlight the head and those ears. But is the image now too awkward?

Eager for all comments and critiques to put me back into a "wildlife frame of mind".

Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS, @ 200mm, 1/2000, f4.5, ISO 400.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Nancy, good to 'toggle' between the Forums and again, nice to see a different subject.

Your reactions based on your description of events is good and great to see you managed to get some frames in the bag. I think it would also be good to see some of the 'conventional' ones too, as you put it. I think something like this would have been great to have got really low on the ground to get another 'eye' contact POV and getting also some OOF vegetation at the foot of the image, mush, but shooting at least f/5.6 as you had SS, shooting wider may have not given you the DOF? However, shooting down like this, the DOF looks good.


I wanted to highlight the head and those ears. But is the image now too awkward?

A bit difficult based on the POV I agree and I'm not sure posting the FF would help, but based on your comment here goes. :S3: I would also look to dropping the Highlights & whites to help the 'trunk' of the nose, this in turn with bring back a little more detail. Again just balancing the sliders in LR or ACR will help tremendously and help tease out more detail which will give you clarity, depth & detail back in on this area. In going tighter and cropping in this way I did clone out the blade of grass, and darken around the edges to hopefully go towards your initial thinking of wanting to highlight the head. With the ears I thinks it's a little difficult because the blend into the back part of the body a little.

Hope this helps and others chime in and hopefully see more of your work soon.

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Nancy - good to see you posting in Wildlife and nice to see a different animal. You did well with the moving armadillo and it coming straight at you. As always, Steve has covered the issues well. I too think the highlights can be tamed slightly and also wish for a little more room at the bottom. I hope you'll post more here.

TFS,
Rachel

[Nancy Bell]

Thank you Rachel & Steve. I see what you mean about the highlights and whites. With the tighter crop that piece of grass most certainly had to go. And I do have more I can add back to the bottom.

[Anette Mossbacher]

HI Nacy,

what a lovely animal :bg3:
Steve & Rachel have covert already all. Next time try to jump to the ground to get it in a low angle. Just kidding, easy said but not so easy to accomplish fast :w3

Ciao
Anette

[Nancy Bell]

Anette, ha!ha! about the jumping. I understand they have poor eyesight and he probably would have bumped right into the camera!

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Hi Nancy. Thats nice and close and I like Steve's idea about a tighter cleaner crop. I would have love to have seen this shot at a lower angle.