Striped symmetry

[Gerhard Weldhagen]

Two Zebra photographed whilst feeding on the same patch of grass during a morning session at Rietvlei Nature Reserve, South Africa. Canon 1DIV, EF 300 f2.8II, 1/250, f14, ISO 640, beanbag rest. Thanks for looking.

[edwardselfe]

Hi Gerhard,

Very nice poses, and lighting and I think you caught the moment well. The symmetry is nice and I think you have just enough fg to give context.

I wonder if you have over-done the NR though - there's a smoothness to the whole image that looks as if high sharpening has been applied after high NR....

Otherwise looks great.

Ed

[Neil Burton]

Agree completely about the NR, the fur looks plastic, 1DIV should not be noisy at ISO640 or is this a crop? I like the symmetry though, light is nice too!

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Gerhard, apart from the above I might also look to see if you can anything more from the left eye, just some detail. I wonder if f/14 might be a little too much for something like this? The symmetry is nice, likewise the lowish POV. The warm light is a nice tough.

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Gerhard - I also like the light and symmetry. Good observations above. In addition some of the blacks look choked up a bit. If you let us know how you pp the image, we might be able to help correct some of the issues.

TFS,
Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Gerhard, nice scene and symmetry. My initial though is that the black was under-exposed. Rachel beat me to it here though. There is no details in the darker part of the blacks on the mane for example. I wonder whether F14 was really needed here or you could have done better with say F11.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Much has been said, Gerhard. I personally am not a fan of this composition, I feel you needed the eye highlighted of the LHS zebra like it is on the RHS zebra to work. Your DOF is way too much here, f8 would have been more than enough with the 300mm IMHO. The details look smudgy, almost like a pastel painting - I'm sure if you run us through the PP we can get to the root of that problem (like Rachel said).