Elephant Herd
A beautiful herd of elephants come down to drink from the river as we were drifting down river, having these massive and awesome animals drinking a few meters away from you is such an experience in its own.
Nguni Voyager, Chobe River, Botswana.
Camera NIKON D600
Lens Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8
Focal Length 24mm
Shutter Speed 1/500 sec
Aperture f/16
ISO 640
Brendon, beautiful image, good choice of F16. The elephants look a bit bright on my monitor. I wonder if a little more contrast would help. Loi
Hi Brendon, a nice scene, great collection of 'big old units'.
I like the camera angle, it creates a nice 'perspective funnel', tapering to the right with the main content in the middle. I agree with Loi, overall the image is a bit 'bright' but the histogram looks very good, nicely balanced, well exposed, so... I would look to adding some mid tone or perhaps some luminosity just through the 'centre wedge' section. Then adding a graduate adjustment to the sky just to darken that a fraction and so make more of the cloud formation too. To me this creates the sandwich, top & bottom being slightly darker, helps to focus things IMHO. Love the colour of the water, but again, I might darken just a fraction on the LHS to help balance the overall tone. Not sure if the side on ele fell into line with the others, that for me would really bring the shot off, having them all in a line.
TFS
Steve
PS You haven bumped into Grant on your travels then?
Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.
I'm not the guru Steve is but toning down the blues a bit, just a bit, might help but very nice shot.
I saw this on FB today. Well done buddy to get the whole herd in from such a close angle. Main points about brightness have been mentioned above and if you can address that then it will take this to the top where it belongs. P.S A couple of those nellies have their eye on you.
This is a winner - and typical of a herd of elephants for one of them not to be doing what you want them to! Agree that the eles look a little bright and you're losing some of the detail as a result. Amazing that they let you get so close that you could compose like this at 24mm!
Ed
beautifully done! love the perspective & DOF. as mentioned by others just a little bit bright.
a bit of curves. WDYT?
Hi Brendon,
great capture with good depth in the image.Elephant nicely lined up along the shore line.
Like the tonality in the darker part, but i think as others it is a tad too light in the HL and MT, so easy to fix.Lovely colors.
TFS Andreas
Awesome perspective and being on a photographic boat and even just the houseboat on the Chobe really rocks, one of those must-do photographic experiences...
Love the sky as well, agree on overall brightness. Girish has done a good job in the repost...
Thanks very much all for your great comments and advice. Below is a RP with some of the recommendations offered.\
Brendon, looking now I prefer your OP sky - the RP sky looks "muddy". I think the "toning down" would work best only on midtones. In other words, tone down brightness with a lumo mask, then use the dodge tool and dodge back some light lights by dodging the highlights across the scene.
Make sense?
Hi Morkel, 100% sense thanks, will give it another bash, on a proper screen when home, working off the laptop at the moment.
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