Reworked a favorite scene from last year trip. On our way back to camp after a full day ou looking for big cats, we ran into this herd taking a bath at the swamp. I underexposed the image by about 1 1/3 EV, so had to bring it back up in LR5. Applied Graduated filter to bring the sky down to about -0.8EV.
My rookie trip to Africa and I dropped my 5D3 and cracked the LCD screen on the first day, so pretty shot blind.
I didn't really have much time of the elephants, after I managed to grab a few shots, the herd started moving towards our vehicle, and our guide wasn't comfortable with being close, so we kept backing away.
5D3
24-70 f4 IS @ 55mm
1/125
F18 (should have shot at F11 or even F8 to gain some shutter speed)
ISO-400
Bright afternoon around 3:30PM with white clouds, very hazy day
Used Nik to bring up details of the cloud
I love this scene and would like to be able to do it right in the future, so would like to get your feedback despite the already mentioned short comings.
Hi Loi - Scenes and interaction like this are so great to witness and often difficult to capture. For me the biggest problem is the blocked elephants on the right side. Having the clump of grass in the fg leaves you with only the ele in the fg and the calf in the back with good head and body angles. If it was possible to move the vehicle to the left in the field, you might have had better sight lines.
We've all been there with having the wrong settings and not realizing it. The underexposure and recovery here has brought out some noise and the Nik has probably augmented it but you did well controlling it at least at this web size. I would have exposed for the elephants and recovered the sky. As you know, exposing to the right is always the way to go (unless trying for silhouette or rim lighting). You are correct that you could have opened up the aperture, with the eles in the fg they would still have been sharp and gotten a bit more shutter speed but more importantly it would have corrected the underexposure assuming you didn't raise the ss so much to negate the gain in light.
Rather than bringing the sky up and then down again, you might try processing the sky separately from the rest of the image.
Finally, I am again seeing a strong halo (looks like a sharpening one) where the eles' backs meet the water.
I concur with Rachel's assessment and recommendation here, Loi. It is a lovely scene with beautiful depth and colour contrasts.
Some NR on the sky would be great. There's enough activity/interest in the herd that the clump of grass on the RHS doesn't bother me as much...
Hi Loi i like the overall scene with nice tone/color .
Shooting angle not ideal , but under stand it is not always the way we want it to be.
I like the overall comp with the large sky and i am fine with the ellies on RHS , enough interest to see on LHS.