Mr Dirty

[Anette Mossbacher]

PB on a cliff looking back to another PB, which was about 50m away higher in the cliffs looking down.
Not all PB are clean, as it looks :bg3:
I have this now sitting quite while here, not posted anywhere. Every day I took a look, changed this, next day I changed back. Steve K. you might know what I mean. My very last step in pp, big post it is on my screen to perform this.

Taken from moving zodiac, fingers frozen, since gloves made me nuts. Right pointer and thumb were never in a glove. Was **** cold was also tempted to cut those "fingers" off on the gloves, but my roommate told me all about frozen off fingers :2eyes2: Swedish!

1DX
70-200mm L IS II & 2x ext III focal length 365mm
ISO 3200 1/500sec HH
TIme, over cast at sunset time, was about between 6-8pm. Cannot access this right now, Bridge has it own thoughts, to much right brained :c3:
Image is FF

Usual pp in LR with a tad noise reduction, PS CS 6 levels, mid tone, curve, sharpening. NO crop!

[Gabriela Plesea]

Anette, it was definitely worthwhile, frozen fingers and all! I absolutely love this, one of your best bear shots! Ticks all the boxes for me-cannot think of a better crop, subject nice and sharp, lovely pose, colours, and super PP work!!!

Kind regards,

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Anette, the PB nicely contrasts with the dark rocks. Nice placement of subject and HA. TFS.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Anette,
very good choice of composition in the field, thinking forward……… well done on that.
Like the subtle colors in the rocks and the bear.

I think at 3200 ISO you should see not that much noise in the BG, so i would try to run some NR on the BG.
And honestly i am missing some clarity /sharpness in the bear and the rocks , but on the other hand i think situation was dull when you took the image, and so it reflects more the original scene.Up to you , but i would go for it….. the clarity.

TFS Andreas

[Morkel Erasmus]

Love the dirty coat and the way the bear is offset from the BG by the colour contrast and distance/depth.
I would agree with Andreas about the clarity/sharpness (perhaps just a nudge more) but BG looks fine to me regarding noise.

[Anette Mossbacher]

Thank you very much Andreas & Morkel.

Andreas will check with noise.
The clarity will push a bit more :bg3:
Thanks a lot

Ciao
Anette

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Anette - I wanted to wait to comment until I was on my calibrated monitor. Interesting how different our experiences were. Your polar bear needs a swim up by the pack ice to clean up. I really like the comp. Good sharpness from a moving zodiac at that ss. Agree about clarity and I also see a small bit of noise in the bg. I'm surprised you didn't clean the bird droppings off the rock at the bottom.

Btw I bought and took fishing mittens/gloves with me. http://www.orvis.com/store/product.aspx?pf_id=33P4

TFS,
Rachel

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Rachel,

bird droppings clean up! There is only one I see, my thought was this belongs to the image. Not everything needs to be tidy. PB dirty - rock dirty :t3 they both go very well IMHO :w3

I checked by now the noise and yep there is a tad. Clarity I am working on, was to late last night.

I brought along 2 kinds of fishing gloves and the Aqua gloves I have for here. The fishing gloves are made with neoprene. Was listening what you told me. All my gloves have an opening for pointer and thumb.
What I have discovered in a series of images with this one, that my setting f/6.3 suddenly was set to f/16. You could imaging my eyes seeing that, my swearing was a mumbling bad words, my zodiac mates had a big laugh and me fast switching again. How that happened I have only a guess, that the finger tip of the glove or another finger turned the wheel without me feeling it, since glove! Not easy to get used to it, it just made me nuts. This winter I will practice to take images with gloves and stupid openings, that I get used to it. I wasn't the only one with such un-comfy glove feeling stuff. What I need is that my thumb is out all the way, the pointer half way. When I did it that way, the dangling left overs of the glove were just somehow in the way! Will cut them off the neoprene gloves someday. My 2 fingers survived, looked a bit shabby after the trip, but were not purple :t3 Now normal again. And yes would do such a trip again, with cut off gloves :t3
Funny though, when I had a look at home those f/16 images are not to bad, 2 are even just sharp :bg3: But not good enough to use, sharpness wise. But when I have seen them at home on the screen, I would have loved to see them already on the boat on a PC. My settings - ISO wise, would have dropped then quite a bit during the rest of trip! When I see what I can HH hold in these days, for sure they will drop in the future here and there. Thanks to Mr K. planting a flea on my head :w3 Thanks Steve :c3:

Thanks a lot Rachel

Have a great day

Ciao

Anette

[Hilary Hann]

I really like the dirty, smudgy look of the polar bear and his pose sits really well into the environment. Very nice.

[edwardselfe]

Great detail and lovely composition. Think it might tolerate a little more sharpening.
Ed

[Martin Dunn]

Good to see that polar bears are not always clean.
Nice composition Anette. The foreground and background rocks work together to give a great impression of depth in the photo.
I agree that the PB could be a tiny bit sharper. But hey, not a blue cast to be seen.

[Marc Mol]

Love the arching look back pose here Anette, the dark rock BG is contrasting nicely and no issues with noise from me, all I'd want is just a tad more in her corner, no big deal.:w3
TFS

[Anette Mossbacher]

Thank you everybody that you took the time to comment.
Addressed the clarity the noise, Rachels bird droppings and the sharpness. Details I gave a little punch. Might not so visible here, like in the big file!
WDYT?

Marc, when I saw the image on the camera screen later on the big boat, I wished to have more room on top. I wanted the PB standing so close to the corner as he/she is in my image. No more room, this is FF!

[Nancy Bell]

Anette, I read through all of the above. Lovely repost! About the gloves...I wear thin stretchy knit gloves under those gloves with the holes in the fingers. The knit is thin and you can feel the camera, but it does give you a bit of protection.

[Martin Dunn]

Good re=post Anette, better detail on the PB. Nice clean rocks too.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Anette, nice 'statuesque' pose of the bear and I love the environment, the difference between yours and Rachel's makes for some excellent images and shows well the diversity of the habitat in which these bears live. You have some leeway if you wanted to open the BKG up a fraction based on the histogram, but no deal breaker. Like the RP. :cheers:

TFS
Steve

[Anette Mossbacher]

Thanks a lot Steve. The diversity of the habitat is really different. We have been fortunate to see the PB's in pack ice and on land. In the pack ice we have seen 4 and the one I have discovered at home on the screen in a Landscape. The dust spot, if you remember.
I do like them in the pack ice and Rachel has some great images, but somehow I do like more the ones on land, especially this dirty one. Something I did not expected when going there, since I am used to clean PB images, mostly with ice and snow. When dirty than covered with blood while eating a seal!

Have seen it with the BG, like it more dark, a tad drama :tinysmile_shy_t:

Have a great eve

Ciao

Anette :wave:

[Steve Kaluski]

Invariably you see them often rolling around in the snow if the have just come out of the water, but the rolling is generally to clean the fur, something you guy seems to not like and is content with his own colour/odour :bg3:. Yep, I agree, slightly darker helps him pop, if I can put it that way.

[Anette Mossbacher]

Lol, Steve, he might was just that one exception between all others. He might like to roll more in the sand/mud than on snow. There was no snow on this island, but certainly the other PB's on this island looked more after their hygiene and "look" :w3
The others might have been female :t3 :Whoa!: :eek3:

:cheers: