Hi Gabriela what a great sport you giving us , love it.
My guess is skin parts of one of the ugliest but still impressive animals in Africa , specially when being an adult male ......... i am talking about the .............WH been in red mud of Hluhluwe/Imfolozi !!!!!!
I keep fingers crossed that i am sitting on the right horse, but i would not bet .
Given clue #2, I would say the hide of rhino or elephant - I am torn between the roughness of a rhino hide (the 'butterflies' being the shadow of the rough texture) or the nuisance value of the elephant.
Whatever IT is, is certainly most interesting, you could have almost posted this by saying its a "butterfly gathering after the rain" from a height and few would have been the wiser.
A part of me doesn't really want to know .........if you get my drift
I am so sorry I told you what it was Rachel, I was somehow looking for your approval in posting this, not really a wildlife image as such and I was not sure if it belonged to OOTB, or Macro rather.
You were all very close, in fact it is a Buffalo hide with flies on it!!! We were sitting next to this herd and waiting for some characters to pop their heads out of the tall grass, I saw the flies gathered so closely on their hides and thought this would make an interesting shot. Wish I was closer, during processing I realised it wasn't really what I hoped for, but at least we had fun doing some guesswork:)
Here's the original...Thanks again for looking, I laughed so hard reading some of your comments...
Nope, not inverted, I just tweaked some sliders really hard. Like I used to do before I joined BPN:) Contrast, levels and curves to the extreme, and sharpening as far as the image could take. A tad of saturation. And sharpening... Had to make it a bit more difficult to guess, although you guys still figured it out- well done!!!
Hi Gabriela, I'm glad you posted it as it did provoke people to stop and think, love it. The OP has an ariel field of a SA landscape from high above, but the true image is also very interesting, nice creative thinking. Sorry could reply sooner as I knew what it was, so good to let the thread run.
So good to hear your thoughts and happy you enjoyed following this thread. Next time I won't give it away to either you or Rachel, I just thought I should confirm with you first because of the nature of this post:) A bit OOTB, but Wildlife is where the majority of my "mates" are, so I thought we should have a bit of fun together and of course, make you guys and girls stop and think:)
Steve, I have learnt from you something extremely valuable : a thought provoking image has much more impact on viewers than a perfectly executed/processed one without that "special something". While I try to process my images best I can, when out in the field I try use my imagination (or the way I "feel" about the subject) to compose, or capture my subjects in a way that grabs anyone looking. This is most important to me, and that is why I am not too worried about the techs when I critique on an image. Even though I might notice things which are not quite perfect, I look for that "WOW" factor you and I have been talking about. In other words " I want to be moved".
I hope to "move" you from time to time, I so enjoy the interaction here on on BPN and just to hear everyone's thoughts, as well as participate in a discussion about any given image.
I must say I am quite disappointed with the lack of participation in the new forum (Story Sequences). I know it is quite a job to do PP work on three or more images, but surely just about everyone has something interesting to share... The number of views tells me people are looking, just surprised only a few actually made an effort to contribute. On this note, I must thank Andreas, Carl, Andre, Peter, Ron and Morkel for their contribution - much appreciated!