Red Hartebeest

[Gabriela Plesea]

One of the few antelopes that can survive without water, the Red Hartebeest finds moisture in bulbs and succulent roots as well as watermelons. It is said that their sight is not that good but they compensate with a great sense of smell and acute hearing. They are incredibly fast and males are very territorial. I have a great number of images of this species but in 99% of them one cannot really see the eyes, they appear to be almost closed and no flicker of light visible. This is one instance where I managed to capture this beautiful special with his eyes wide open, and I owe that to another male Hartebeest approaching the scene

Nikon D3S
Nikon 500/F4
ISO 800
F5.6
1/3200s

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Gabriela, this is an amazing portrait! The warm colors, the eye, the mud coated horns all add to this. I agree it is not easy to catch them with eyes wide open and you did a fine job with the opportunity. I wouldn't mind a tad more room above, but no deal breaker. Excellent image, TFS.
Sanjeev

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gabriela,
great portrait of this kind of "ugly" or "odd" looking , but very elegant in shape build Antelope.
Nice warm colors, good details and sharpness.Like the crop as presented.But would reduce the sharpening ever so slightly on the body side and neck , looks a tad crunchy , not much though, just trying to make a good pic even better.
Some might say reduce the reds , i do not think to do that, simply they are kind of reddish and this is lit by the late sun , i feel.
There is some blue creeping through in the shadow of the ears and horns .

Really nice one, well done.
Cheers Andreas

[Thinus Schoeman]

Hi Gabriela, this a great portrait of a difficult animal to photograph as you also alluded to. I think your composition is spot on. The image is very well exposed, with a very strong focus on the eye. The contrast against the blue sky works very well. Well done!

Thinus

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Gabriela - Beautiful portrait in gorgeous light. You are right it is difficult to get the eye open. The portrait comp works well and the detail looks good. I know the light was warm but I might drop the yellows just slightly. Overall, very nice image.

TFS,
Rachel

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Gabriela, beautiful portrait shot and as you said, it is difficult to get the open eye. I don't know this species, so can't comment on the colors. but I agreed with Andreas that it looks a bit crunchy. The light angle is not ideal. but probably not much you can do about it. TFS. Loi

[Ian Cassell]

What a wonderful portrait of an amazing looking beast. Those horns are awesome!

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Beautiful, Gabriela! Can't get it clearer than that! Glad to see you also use 'normal' ISO figures ! It's always amazing to me how fast these animals can run down/uphill or over any other rough terrain!

Just curious - where did you photograph this?

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Friends,

And thank you so much for your kind feedback!
Sanjeev, I had no room above but I can always clone some, decided some time ago to "keep it clean" when it comes to processing, unless it is absolutely necessary…

Andreas, on my monitor I cannot see the blue, I will try to isolate the horns and work on the blue, see if there's any-thank you for pointing this out. I actually reduced the reds a tad, this chap looked so amazing in that beautiful light, wish you could see him!

Rachel-thank you-I tried to reduced the yellow after I read your comment, but I am not quite happy with the result, don't know how to describe the real colour of this species, it is like copper, golden-red, especially in the sun, cannot even describe it in words? Tried very hard to maintain the natural colours here, I know how important that is, but now I have my doubts after reading everyone's comments. Will take a look at my videos, see if it helps. Regarding crunchiness- I only sharpened the eyes, muzzle, and horns (horns were a bit soft because F-stop).

Tobie- thank you, "normal", or standard ISO to me is probably 400. Let's say we are on a photographic trip and we get back at night from a long day's drive; the first thing I do is download and clean the cards, then set up my equipment for the next morning. That means higher ISO because the light is normally low at 6 am, so I prepare for that by pushing the ISO to 800 or even 1000 and I start at at a low F-stop of 5. Just in case... As soon as we move in the morning, I check my settings and adjust accordingly, in case something suddenly comes into view and it is worth shooting. As the morning progresses and the light gets better, I slowly reduce ISO -ideally 400 or 500, depending on the shutter speed I need. When it comes to running antelope I need at least 2500/s to have a sharp image. It also depends on how close they get, a higher F-stop requires-once again-higher ISO. If my subject is still I might get away with less, but often that is not the case. The bigger the lens, the more thirsty it is, so for the 500 I must have at least a shutter speed of 500/s. I would rather have a sharp subject and some noise than an OOF subject and no noise- one can always apply some Noise Reduction, even though it is not ideal. One of my previous images -the Wild-Eyed-Wonder- was shot around 6am, the sky was cloudy and the light unfavourable. So I pushed ISO to 8000 and 10000, this is how bad I wanted to capture those images… This is why I bought the Nikon D3S, because it had a good reputation as the King of Noise…To answer your question, this image was taken in the Kalahari, near Lijersdraai waterhole. I only had seconds to photograph this Hartebeest, he soon turned around and ran away. That is, after he "closed" his eyes again. I have an image of this boy with his eyes half-closed, it is hilarious, I might post it sometime...

Wishing you all a wonderful evening,

[Morkel Erasmus]

A lovely portrait of an underestimated ungulate, Gabriela...great Kalahari light too! Great detail where it matters. For me, it looks like you may have just did a sliver too much lightening of the shadows? I'd add more contrast here - just a wee bit.

Regading your long explanation on ISO selections in the last post - I can highly recommend using the D3s on full manual with auto ISO...takes a lot of the worry away and the potential for mistaken settings. Choose your aperture, choose your SS, and let the camera worry about the ISO (you can set an upper limit, so that it doesn't go beyond 6400 or 12800 or whatever your tolerance level is).

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Gabriela, nice portrait with a killer BKG.

Techs look good, but I think 1/3200 is a tad high, you could have easily dropped to 400 and still retained a highish SS, enough for this. If you could have moved slightly to the left so the horns did not intersect I feel would have been better, but not a deal breaker. I'll leave it to others on any colour issues, however on the laptop it looks like nice warm tones on and along the neck. Based on the OP is this FF, as I would have liked a little more image area to the LHS.

TFS
Steve

[Gabriela Plesea]

Thank you Morkel and Steve, this is indeed FF and I even cropped a bit from the RHS and from the bottom too. Steve you are right about the ISO, in this case I had no time to change settings, I spotted the Hartebeest as Andre was driving, got him to stop the car and barely managed to capture this, no planning here whatsoever and the next two or three images might be better framed but the eyes of the Hartebeest are half-closed and then fully closed...These chaps are fast, they cross the road then stop for a second to look back at you and then they are gone...Morkel, I do use the D3S sometimes on manual with auto ISO, and especially when shooting antelope running (eg. the bokkies last year), this was just pure chance and I must admit I never even thought about it, just shot to get those eyes! I realise I have lightened the shadows too much, will adjust, thank you!

[Tim King]

neat looking animal. Great photo as well. Fine job.