Elephantine Dawn

[Morkel Erasmus]

Well, thought I would kick off the September theme, which is: IUCN Red List Near Threatened and Worse Subjects

This elephant was photographed at sunrise on our last morning in Mana Pools this past July. The sunrise was hazy and moody, more so compared to our other mornings.
I tried to capture a frame with both elephant and the sun, something which is hard at the best of times in terms of exposure given the dark undertones of the albida forest I was in.
The whole thinking process is described on my blog - in short, trust your histogram and not your LCD display as such...
Read it here: http://blog.morkelerasmus.com/2016/08/trust-your-histogram.html

Techs:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 300mm f2.8 VR-II
f5.6 | 1/1000 SS | ISO-250
EV -0.7

[Basil Dardagan]

Magic result - must say I sat trying to figure out how I would try and achieve a similar result before reading your caption and I could not really reach a conclusion. Going to read the blog

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Morkel - lovely sunrise colors and just the right amount of detail for me. I like the placement of ele and sun at opposite corners. In an ideal world the ele would be more parallel to camera rather than angled slightly away but they seldom cooperate on that front.

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

in short, trust your histogram and not your LCD display

Something I have constantly said over the last few years Morkel and until people do it they will not see the benefit, as it's the way to go.

Works for me Morkel with just the right amount of depth/detail in the dark areas. I see where Rachel is coming from, but I think it's the body that is slightly angled with the head parallel IMHO????

TFS
Steve

[Dumay de Boulle]

I must say I like this one a lot. Great detail in the darker areas, especially the way you handled the Ellie. The image has amazing tones all around. Very appealing to the eye.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Morkel -- First of all thank you for reminding us again about the histogram ! Definitely one should trust it rather than the LCD.

AS far as the image is concerned it is an absolutely beautiful image , with all the elements coming together so nicely . I love how you improvise on the field and produce such lovely images . Indeed inspirational .

TFS !

[keith mitchell]

Have been reading how you thought this one out Morkel and it certainly as worked very well for you,sun just warming the top part of the image does it for me.

Keith.

[Marc Mol]

Perfect use of Exp comp here Morkel. and this mood setter works extremely well, trust your histogram is absolutely correct and something I've been advocating to others for many, many years.

Let's just hope both Nikon and Canon soon show a RAW data histogram (not just JPG) on their LCD's. :w3

TFS

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Excellent image with great composition, light and details. Works on all counts! TFS.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Thank you for your kind comments, folks :cheers: