We all learned the terrible news that another Kenya giant tuskers has lost its battle against poachers. So I thought it may be appropriate to post this image of an African elephant with no tusk. This is a rare trait in South African elephant, only about 1% of the South African elephant in the 1930s had this trait. It saved them from hunters and the gene got passed on. We saw many elies on our recent trip to Botswana with no tusk. It's sad to think that this may be the only defense mechanism left against poachers.
5D3
70-200f2.8 II @ 145mm
1/800
f9
ISO-800
HH
Cloned out a couple OOF strands of grass in the FG
Graduated filter to bring up exposure of the bottom half
Nik to the sky and partial to the elie
Bright sunny afternoon
One of the more challenging images to process for me in terms of colors.
Appreciate your comments.
Loi, I learned that the elephants in Chobe are Kalahari elephants, the largest in size of all known elephant populations. They are characterized by rather brittle ivory and short tusks, most likely due to calcium deficiency in the soils. You will frequently see broken tusks. Hopefully this makes them less attractive to ivory poachers. And no tusks should certainly keep the poachers away. I like the ellie moving into the water with the nice layer of grasses behind, plus the interesting clouds in the sky. Just wondering how a bit more contrast would look, especially in the sky.
Hi Loi - I too like the comp with the ele walking in the water and the a bit of the surrounding habitat. Interesting about the no tusks trait. Nice warm light and good sharpness. Obviously you were there but I would expect the grasses near the water to be a bit more green and lush. I also think you can bring out some more detail in the clouds with LCE. I took your op into PS and applied a luminosity mask to the highlights at 40% opacity. Next I increased the saturation of the greens by +10 and darkened them by bringing the lightness down by -20 in a hue/saturation layer. Finally, I applied LCE to the sky using USM at 10, 20, 0. WDYT?
Hi Loi if this is the only way to survive , well then it is a shame , but better that than rather dying.
I know there was a story going in SA at Addo NP , they only had ellies with small or no tusks due to killing all the big guys in the past. They reintroduced some really big units from Kruger to Addo , we will see what the future brings.
Regarding the image , i think this conveys quite nice the light situation in terms of brightness and colors .I like the whole setting and the comp.
Overall i do find the tones a bit flat , if this was mine i would give it more pop in color and tone, but this is just me.
Have you recognized the off tail ellie in the back of the front one ?
Hi Rachel, thank you for trying to make the image better, but i think both yours and mine versions lack the pop that Andreas referred too. I'm not sure why the blue looks pretty weak. I could try to go back from scratch and re-do the WB. Here I purposely went with a warmer WB and i like the tone on the elie, but the sky didn't come thru.
Hi Andreas, yes I noticed the missing tail. I saw a couple of young ones with missing tails and assumed that these guys narrowly escaped the lions.
Love the setting here Loi, so typical of Botswana here, it was certainly very sad to hear of old & majestic Satao being poached for his magnificant tusks,
and too think rangers had already saved him from another poisened spear attack from poachers just a month or two earlier.
I think you could add more pop to the sky and water by selectively reducing your WB on both as it's a tad too warm for mine, I've had tried it and has come up quite well.
I hear you saying "but that's what I saw??", I understand and sympathize with that but it would boost the image overall.
TFS