African Penguins in harsh light for Rosl

[Tony Whitehead]

The African Penguins at Boulders Beach near Simonstown are great to visit and watch but photographing them can be a challenge as the light is often harsh and coming from the wrong direction and options for changing your shooting position are very limited. In my comments about Rosl's last post I mentioned that I had been disappointed at my last trip as I hadn't got anything I was really happy with. I revisited my files and found this image that illustrates the problem well. We had been staying with friends en route to others and it would have been rude to leave at 4 a.m to get the best light. Breaching Southern Right Whales on the way had forced us to stop and watch so we only arrived late morning with the sun high in the sky. This group were standing on a rock near the edge plucking up courage to launch when a large wave washed over the rock. I like the triangular comp but the backlight and bright water makes it almost impossible to hold the whites and keep details in the blacks. Distance and brightness levels preclude fill flash being effective. This was exposed at matrix -0.3 to achieve a histogram just clipping on the right - this was processed through ACR to recover the clipped highlights (apart from the specular highlights in the water), fill light was used to try and bring out some shadow detail accepting that it would be a bit noisy. USM was used (50%, 25px, 6 levels) to boost local contrast a bit which made the penguins pop a little better (Clarity slider would have a achieved similar in ACR). Little more DOF would have been nicer (ISO 400 and f8 may have been a better choice) as would a better head angle on the penguin back left. Not a great image but a nice reminder of the day.
Nikon D200
Nikon 200-400 @400mm
ISO 200 1/1600s f5.6
Opinions and advice gladly accepted.

[Sid Garige]

Well done job considering the light conditions Tony.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Tony, just come back from Cape Town on our summer holidays. I know exactly where Boulders beach is, and you can also tell the folks that at the beach where one can swim, the penguins walk around amonst the bathers too. Excellent work on your image, and thanks for explaining your process. You have done well to get them all in focus apart from the guy in the right front,( slightly OOF, but not a nit) but they all pop from the surf nicely. Overall, well processed and captured Tony.

[Rosl Roessner]

Thank you Tony, for understanding my problems and explaining it that well! Yes, I am a bit dissappointed from my Penguin Pictures, but it is true, what all of you tell me now: "You will learn a lot from the "bad" images..."
I a quite happy, that one day I was able to go to the beach before sunset and that I've got some nice images from the penguins in front of the red morningsun.

Love and thanks,
Rosl