Two tons of love...

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys, I recently returned from two week in North Queensland and spent time on the Daintree river. Meet 'Barrett', not sure of his weight exactly but I know he would love to meet you... especially one quiet balmy evening down by the river at the waters edge, just you and him, alone....he's irresistible, and not the least bit shy... What I noticed on this trip is lots of signs advising of the salt water crocodiles and the danger they present, and right next to the sign there are always backpackers sitting on the edge of the river apparently waiting for him. Go figure. Apparently crocs account for about 30 to 40 head of cattle per year along this river which is not very long.. One croc has about 1.5Km of the river to himself and will attack and usually kill whatever enters his 'patch'. My self critique on this image is lack of DOF... I must get use to upping the F stop much more when switching from birds to large animals. 1D4 + 500 F4, 1/1250 sec @ F8, ISO 1600, manual eval metering. Hand held from boat. Processed mainly in ACR and sharpened using NIK package. Cropped top and bottom. Thanks for looking DON

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Don - does look like an impressive beast. Nice low pov and agree with your self-assessment about the dof but it's nice to see something different and the pano crop works well. I do wish you could have gotten the whole tail in but it might not have been possible. I feel like the image needs a little boost. I ran a luminosity mask at about 30%, levels and curves layers to adjust the midtones, and finally cloned out the two specular highlights on the lhs just above the croc. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Don, nothing surprises me these days, you could have a 48ft bill poster sign, or a display with huge letters in 24hr neon, people will still ignore it until something happens, then everyone goes on a shooting frenzy and who suffers, the animal!

I can see why you went for what you did and this certainly conveys that this guy is really a BIG croc, not to be trifled with and to be given huge respect, however I personally feel I want all the tail in, still retaining the position of, more to the right. Perhaps shooting with a 70-200 with a 1.4x. I'm not sure how far you might have had to go in your DOF, but also you would then need to balance the ISO too, I think it's fine as is. Perhaps f/11 but would that have given you much more, I doubt it, even going to f/22???

Don, I'm away so again I could be way off using the laptop, but you could just drop the exposure in LR above the crock, add a Curves adjustment/mid tone just to balance the lighter areas and by doing so, the mid tone adds more definition overall, then another round of USM to the front part of the croc. The BKG is a tad busy and using one of the gimmicks in PS you could just knock it back, BTW not using Gaussian. Seriously I don't think it very far off, just a couple of subtle tweaks. If the RP is way off let me know and I will delete it.

BTW any closer/detail images, perhaps with the jaws open?

Nice to see a different species and you posting here too, hope to see more.

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Don - Steve's rp went even further and really takes it up a notch.

,
Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Don, it's great to see a massive croc from a low vantage point. Great comp to show his head straight on and the massive legs. Steve's RP took it up a couple of notches. For me, dropping the exposure of the BG and adding more details of the mid one really enhanced the image. Loi

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Rachel, sorry you must have posted whilst I was reviewing the image and trying to compile my thoughts so I hadn't seen your reply, apologies Don, didn't mean for a RP overload.

Steve

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Don, an impressive croc for sure...hope to see one like this in the wild one day. I like Steve's repost with the blurred background as it really makes the croc standout nicely.

[Don Railton]

Thanks Steve and Rachel for the reposts and Andrew and Loi for the comments... both RP's are improvements IMHO but Steves blurry BG is what does it for me... The blur places the emphasis on the Croc. I struggled to get these shots as the boat man seemed to enjoy making the boat slowly pirouette in front of the Croc, probably so everyone got a look. This made it difficult to frame the Croc as I was spinning around on the boat trying not to clout people in the head with the lens. Adding a second shot so I could stitch on the tail was difficult in these conditions. I do have others I will post, some are head only shots but none are with mouth open unfortunately Steve. I have taken some full body shots with my 70 to 200 also.

DON