Morkel Erasmus
01-20-2010, 02:32 PM
On our recent trip to the Kruger Park in December '09 we spent one evening on a low-water bridge over the Shingwedzi river just behind the Shingwedzi rest camp. It was very amusing to watch the waterfowl patrol the low-water bridge for fish as the river was flowing strongly over the bridge. The crocodiles also waited their turn on the other side of the bridge.
The entire day was cloudy and gloomy and the sun just peeked through the overcast clouds as it started to dwindle over the horizon. The reflections in the water were stunning. Both me and my wife were taking pictures here, and in fact I believe she shot this one as I was handling my loaned Nikon system at the time. This bird was pretty much next to the car on the bridge, and didn't even pay us much attention.
I did a lot of processing on this one to enhance the strong points. I created a normal masked blend with a multiplied BG, and then ran another set of generated exposures through Photomatix to create an HDR to enhance the dynamic range. Then I blended both these versions together in CS3 and enhanced with various tweaks and adjustments.
I would love to have your thoughts on this one. I have many shots of this encounter from both the Canon and Nikon cameras and will need to browse through them some more - this was the first one I pulled in at random from the folder.
This version lacks some finite sharpness but noise gets enhanced when I selectively sharpen the bird thus I will rework it from the large file - it's just a load of processing and would first like to get some feedback before I venture into it again :)
Techs:
Canon 1000D with 100-400mm L IS USM @ 100mm
f4.5 @ 1/200 SS @ ISO-800
The entire day was cloudy and gloomy and the sun just peeked through the overcast clouds as it started to dwindle over the horizon. The reflections in the water were stunning. Both me and my wife were taking pictures here, and in fact I believe she shot this one as I was handling my loaned Nikon system at the time. This bird was pretty much next to the car on the bridge, and didn't even pay us much attention.
I did a lot of processing on this one to enhance the strong points. I created a normal masked blend with a multiplied BG, and then ran another set of generated exposures through Photomatix to create an HDR to enhance the dynamic range. Then I blended both these versions together in CS3 and enhanced with various tweaks and adjustments.
I would love to have your thoughts on this one. I have many shots of this encounter from both the Canon and Nikon cameras and will need to browse through them some more - this was the first one I pulled in at random from the folder.
This version lacks some finite sharpness but noise gets enhanced when I selectively sharpen the bird thus I will rework it from the large file - it's just a load of processing and would first like to get some feedback before I venture into it again :)
Techs:
Canon 1000D with 100-400mm L IS USM @ 100mm
f4.5 @ 1/200 SS @ ISO-800