B&W Baby Elephant

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

I tried this B&W conversion in Nik Silver efex pro of this baby ele greeting us on a safari at Timbavati. I thought the B&W conversion suited this scene. Hope I did OK. Wanted to highlight the texture on the baby flanked by the adults. The centre placement of the baby was my best option to balance the image.
7D
110mm
f/6.3
1/100
ISO 400

[Nancy Bell]

This is a delightful image! I think you choose a great balance using the adults as nearly symmetrical bookends for the youngster in the middle. I especially like the widespread ear on the youngster. Just a few details occur to me. If you have it, a bit more room at the bottom would give those feet some space. There are 2 obvious round white dots on the right elephant near the top that appears to be some sort of artifact that can easily be cloned away. I think b&w was a good idea as you want all the attention on the little one and not be distracted by the various grays and browns of the adults or the color of the grasses.

[Mark Needham]

Agree with everything Nancy pointed out. Also, shame about the slow shutter speed (SS) here that caused the baby's trunk to be blurry on the end (as it was moving) - I would have pushed the ISO a bit higher (not too high with the 7D) to allow a faster SS.

[Douglas Bolt]

Like the conversion. I don't mind the end of the trunk on the little ele being out of focus. There is always something humorous to me about a little elephant.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Sanjeev - I really like the way you used the two adults/larger eles to frame the youngster. There's a cuteness factor too. Good suggestions above, particularly about more room below and more ss in the field. The conversion looks good with nice textures. If it were mine I would burn the brighter areas of the grasses under the eles.

TFS,
Rachel

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Sanjeev,

I have a very soft spot for baby ellies, they are so cute and often appear so vulnerable...Yours is safely tucked between the two adults and yes, he can afford to wave his trunk at you without fear of any consequences!

Nice capture and you almost got away with it at 1/100s...It is of course a matter of personal taste, and if you aimed to have that trunk blur then you obviously had the right settings. As much as I love the moment you have captured, the blur in this particular instance is a tad problematic for me, since the trunk itself is aiming towards the camera and therefore becomes the focal point (a blurry focal point). Please forgive me for nit-picking, another issue for me is the lack of space at the bottom of the image, it looks like the little one's feet have been cut off.

Nevertheless, a special image I enjoyed viewing and I know from personal experience that sometimes there's just not enough time to adjust settings and reframe, we capture things as they come and take them home with us, possessing the scene. How long they survive in our memory often depends on how we process them and how happy we are with the outcome:)

The conversion certainly works and I look forward to see more B/W images from you

Kind regards,

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Sanjeev looks quite neat and nicely processed too. Good tonal range and the center placement with the framing adults works very good.Not to forget the nice details .
Good suggestions/observations by Nancy. I just think it is a wee bit tight at the foot of the image .

TFS Andreas