Stormy Silhouette

[Mark Needham]

Image:

Elephant
Masai Mara, Kenya
September 2015

This elephant was photographed in Mara North Conservancy in the greater Masai Mara in Kenya. At sunset, a massive storm approached quickly from the northeast (over the escarpment). A small herd of young elephants walked up onto the top of a little ledge / hill with one of them becoming slightly separated from the group and lagging behind for just a few seconds before it then moved quickly to the right and faced slightly away from me. I had time to fire off just a few frames before the elephant’s position and the light changed for the worse.

Ideally, the elephant would have been positioned slightly further to the left (rule of thirds). I did not want to crop in more from the left because that would have chopped off the main rays of light. No room to add more negative space to the right because of the edge of an ugly bush and part of the butt of another elephant that I cropped out because they are distracting.

Wild, no compositional elements changed.

Comments and critique are certainly welcomed and appreciated, and thanks for your valuable comments on my previous image! :cheers:

And, to follow off Andre's previous post about rhino poaching, I will say "All I want for New Year's is...hands off our elephants!" Ivory belongs on elephants, not on the shelves of souvenir stores.

Equipment:

Canon 5D Mark 3
Canon 24-70mm f2.8L Mark II lens
F5.6, 1/2500, ISO 200.
full manual mode, spot metered off the sky
handheld

Processing:

Lightroom: standard RAW conversion and global adjustments
Photoshop: luminosity masks (several), curves, brightness, selective color, vibrance, slight crop on all sides, and very minor rotation. Resized, sharpened, etc. for output. No noise reduction applied.

[Jonathan Ashton]

That is spectacular, I really like it very much indeed. I agree with your self critique. I really enjoy the detail in the clouds and the silhouetted ele.
I may have been tempted to take a slice off the top, I think this still permits the menacing rain clouds to be prevalent but I think it affords a little more attention to the ele.
Whoa, I bet you were pleased with this - great shot.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Marc - Fantastic god rays and I agree fantastic image. I agree with your self-critique but in the face of not being able to put the elephant more to the left, perhaps embrace having it more centered. Here, I cropped a bit from the top and right but maintained the original ratio of the image. I just felt the heavy, storm clouds overwhelmed it a bit. Also be careful of the halo around the ele. I would be thrilled to have captured this image.

Happy New Year and TFS,
Rachel

[Marc Mol]

Very nice elescape here Mark :5

you've extracted nice detail & colour in the clouds, just a shame about the placement, but understand the circumstances.

Re, the halo, I gather there is none on your full size TIF or JPG and is an unfortunate consequence or downsizing to a tiny 400kb web sizing, you can try the healing brush tool set to darken (blend mode) to assist in this issue.:w3

TFS

All the best for a healthy & prosporous NY :cheers:

[Tim Harding]

Absolutely spectacular. I like Rachel's crop, with some of the large expanse of black sky removed.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Mark what a stunner ... it is all where it needs to be .
No point of critique from my side , this just works so well , love the drama in the sky !!!! :5 :cheers:

For me the OP crop can stay , but i also like Rachel´s version .... if i had to decide i would go with yours

Only the halo has to go :wave:

TFS and a great 2016 for you and your family

[Andre Pretorius]

Hi Mark

Stunning image..lots of deeper implications with darks arriving...
I would crop a tad from the top to have more attention on the ellie.
Still say-- Hands off!
Would not mind at all to have this in my files.
Happy New Year to you and your Family.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Superb capture Mark!

And Happy New Year to you!

Enjoyed viewing this frame so much, I am certain I will revisit this thread soon. Loved reading the story behind the frame, and I see clearly you are passionate about wildlife -this moves me tremendously.

I sincerely hope to see more from you. Forgive my brief comments - it is late, New Year's Eve, and after a hard day at work and some hours in the kitchen I am left with little or no energy to write my usual lengthy "critique". Just wanted to say I really like this a lot, and for many reasons:)

Warmest regards,

[Mark Needham]

Hi Everyone. Happy New Year! :cheers:

Thanks for your fantastic comments and excellent suggestions, especially catching the halo issue. Here is the RP.

I dealt with the halo (there was some natural rim light in the RAW file making it look like a halo, and then the sharpening and downsizing were accentuating this quite a bit). I also did some tweaks to extract a bit more detail and the layers in the dark clouds. Finally, I cropped a bit from the top, as per several comments here. I also cropped a bit from the left (not the right as per Rachel's RP, as I cannot bring myself to centering the elephant in the middle [I prefer the subject to be off-center in most cases]) so now the elephant is at least touching the rule of thirds line.

Thanks again, and comments welcome as always!

[Charlene Bacchioni]

Mark, well done ,you saw it and turned it into a beautiful image.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Mark, it doesn't get much better than this. :cheers:

Great timing on the encounter and I feel the RP justifies the scene perfectly IMHO, albeit I wasn't there :S3:. The PP is spot on and the retention of detail and light has been handled with a light, yet sensitive hand, a pleasure to view.

Very, very nice work indeed, a fitting image as December came to a close.

TFS
Steve

BTW you should look at Andy Rouse's image of a Giraffe too.

[haseeb badar]

Hi MArk -- I agree with the above comments , Brilliant is the word to describe this image and I like your OP . TFS !

[Mike Poole]

Absolutely spectacular. Nothing more to add other than print -> frame -> wall !

Mike

[keith mitchell]

Mark talk about capturing the moment,wonderful image.

Keith.

[Morkel Erasmus]

A real cracker Mark! Love the mood, lighting and composition.
I am fine with placement of the ele in the frame, as the "ROT" placement would have felt too "textbook/photoclub" for me. :w3

Good job with the halo in the RP!

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Mark and Gang, I love this as an IOTW, I love the light and the spectacular God-rays, and the sharpness. As for the halo, I am sure that the halo is there in part in the RAW file as it often is with strong backlight. Great job on the elephant. As far as the image design goes, however, I will buck the tide by suggesting two images that you might have made in the field. And yes, you could have made each of them in a matter of a very few seconds. Heck, perhaps you made one or both of them. I will assume that you set focus on the elephant either using One-Shot AF with shutter button or using Rear Button focus. After making the image in Pane #1 (my favorite of the designs here BTW), you could have/should have pointed the lens well to your right putting the elephants rear legs just over the animal symbol in your signature. Then you could have/should pointed the lens well to your left so that the last bit of light sky 2/3 of the way up in the frame would be just inside the right frame-edge with a border. Of the two, I think that the first option would have been the stronger and more dramatic with the huge amount of black clouds.

I like to try and look at all the possibilities even when dealing with obviously spectacular images like this one, including and especially with my own. a

[Mark Needham]

Thanks for your kind comments, Artie. And, hope all is well! The challenge I was facing here is there was a huge downed tree (stump) to the left of the frame, and an ugly bush and a small group of elephants facing away from me (so their butts looked like massive rocks) to the right. I actually cropped some of that out to maintain the "clean" look here.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Mark, Whenever we critique images we can only assume that all things were equal... a

[Arthur Morris]

For what it's worth...