Hi Steen - Welcome to the Wildlife Forum. Nice first post here. You did very well shooting in such a downpour and the slow ss helps to show the rain. I like the placement of the bears in the frame. Colors and tones seem consistent with the weather. I might try sharpening mom's head just a tiny bit more. Cloning is a personal choice and up to each individual photographer as to whether it is something they are comfortable doing. I'm sure there will be many that say go ahead and remove it, personally I would leave it.
It would be great if you would add your comments to other images and I know you commented on Gail's hippo. We recommend commenting on at least 3-5 other Wildlife images each time you post one of your own. It helps to foster a sense of community and us all to learn from each other.
Looking forward to seeing more of your wildlife images. TFS,
Hi Steen, welcome to Wild Life Forum. I understand why you took the shot. Very nice family portrait in the pouring rain. Good to keep for memory. As for the quality of the image, there wasn't enough details in the Bears and I suspect the slow SS also affected the sharpness. You were pretty much at the limit of your equipment I think. Loi
Another big welcome here!
I like rainy scenes like this. I do think you lost some critical sharpness on the subjects, not much to be done about it in such a downpour. Sharpening them some more may help as Rachel suggested.
I look forward to more of your images and your input on the images of others, Steen!
Happy 2015 as well...
Hi Steen, yep typical Alaskan weather, you can have all four seasons in one day here, great, providing you pack well.
IMHO 1/80 is way to low and so the critical sharpness is certainly lost. Cranking the ISO up even to 6400+++ I doubt would have gained much more SS, this is where perhaps using a faster lens i.e. 300f/2.8 with a 1.4 (if available) would be good, the 100-400 is just too slow. I assume you also had to crank up the EV which in turn lost you SS? Looking at the image I quite like the overall comp, having a slightly higher SS say 1/200 would have helped I think in bring out more of the rain streaks, overall the image needs to be a bit darker in the Exp, it's falling way to short and will help bring back a bit more tonal depth overall.
it tells the story well, shame about what makes this image ie. the downpour added to the low S/S has effected the quality somewhat.
I do think it would benefit by another round of USM on the bears.
A warm welcome to Wildlife Forum, Steen! And a very cute first post, love the content as well as framing, and - just like Rachel -I do not mind the little leaf one bit
I do find that the characters in this image would benefit from a little detail, which is I guess a lot to ask, given the weather/lighting conditions. I did try a couple of things and not sure I achieved what I had in mind, anyway here's my humble attempt to make the bears "pop" a little. Lifted exposure and played a bit with levels and curves, trying to bring back that brown fur which I found to be too dark. Another round of sharpening, hope not too much - what do you think?
I really enjoyed viewing, I think you have captured something special and I could not help smiling seeing those little ones barely hanging on at the top of those rocks...Please post some more!
Thanks to you all for the warm welcome to the wildlife forum
I am mostly photographing birds as we have not much wildlife in Denmark. Only some deer's and a few squirrel ... ; - )
However, I will most certainly visit the wildlife forum from time to time and bring my comments to your great pictures.
Thanks for spending your time on giving such useful feedback on my Grizzly photo. And a special thanks to Gabriela doing a fine effort to improve on the detail and sharpening. Trust me, the weather was really bad!