Wild Dog

[Glenn Pure]

We had arrived in the Savute mid afternoon after a long drive from Chobe. As luck would have it, we saw our first (and last) pack of wild dogs late that afternoon on our first game drive there. The dogs were clearly marshalling for a hunt but the light was going fast and I was lucky to get shots at all. I had to work fairly hard to extract a useable shot from the frames I had (don't look at the techs - you'll be horrified). One of the most memorable things from this encounter was the smell of these animals which was quite remarkable, even at 8 or 10 metres away. Crop is maybe three quarters of the frame area.

As always, thanks for looking and for any comments you may have.

Technical: Canon 80D with Lens EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 182mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/50, f7.1, ISO 2000. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, Sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, reduced luminance NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements. Modest NR using Neat Image plus sharpening in Neat Image to animal and stronger NR to background. Sharpened animal (sharpness function: remove Gaussian blur) after final size reduction.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

You've done well here giving the circumstances Glenn! Nothing wrong with the detail of the dog's face and you've caught its ears quite well in a typical alert state as it absorbed the early evening sounds.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Glenn -- This is a great subject and to sight one in the wild must be a delightful encounter. Unfortunately the IQ has suffered because of the low light and the image looks a bit flat, details are lacking on the face and appears a bit noisy, especially the snout. Sorry, not quite working for me.

TFS !

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Glenn - It's always a thrill to see wild dogs. Yes, the smell can be quite strong especially if they are wet or when they eviscerate their prey. Steve, Alison and I joked about needing smell-o-vision to truly do the images and video justice. It's good that the head is relatively clear of the foliage, the ears perked and the eye visible. Yes, the detail is lacking in the blacks of the snout and lower jaw and also in the hls along the back of the neck and body. The noise isn't bothering me much viewing at this size and on the web. It probably would if printed.

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Glenn, sadly both techs and PP have let this down and although you have kept the head clear the shooting angle is not great for me, a bit like Sanjeev's Lioness. However I think you did well as you would need a longer lens and to be further back to get a better angle.

If you have the time then I think you should revisit the Raw, you need to get separation between subject and habitat and I think the initial shot was under exposed. Colour also appears like a blanket wash where everything is in the same colour tone and depth and in reality it wouldn't be. This is in no way how it should look, but I just wanted to illustrate the point about trying to get separation between subject and the environment. Colour is off on the Dog and partially the habitat, but hard to be any more accurate from the OP.

Savuti holds some fond memories and probably has change a bit since I was last there, however I wonder if the elephant stockade was still there to photograph from?

TFS
Steve

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Wils dogs are incredible creatures and always exciting to watch. Am glad you could see them at least. We had a wonderful sighting in Selous a couple years ago where we saw 11 pups and 6-7 adults in the den. This image is nice with the clear head and eye visible but agree with the comments above regarding detail. Take care.

[Glenn Pure]

Many thanks for all your comments. One reason I have held off posting this one is because of the IQ issues which you can all see. The dogs were scattered and I grabbed what I could as we observed them - no point getting the guide to move the vehicle in a dynamic situation like this. I have a few other shots where IQ is better but other issues may impinge - may post more but I'll think about it some more.

As for colour, it was quite dry when we were there (May) and brown-looking. There wasn't a great deal of green so colour may not be that far off. Given the IQ issues, I don't think this is worth much more effort though. I take your point about separation as well but I didn't mind the animal-merging-into-environment look so I did not try to create any more separation. I did deliberately leave the saturation low on the surrounds but added a little to the dog to compensate for the high ISO (which does reduce dynamic range and flatten colour). This has provided some separation, reduced potential visual distractions in the surrounds and I'm not at all uncomfortable with that aspect of the OP.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Dear Glenn,

As soon as you said "don't look at the techs" I had to scroll up and check:) Just kidding, Glenn...Reading between the lines I realise with sadness you are running out of Africa images. You must have loved it here and enjoyed photographing our wildlife. I sincerely hope you return, there's so much more to see and experience.

Regarding image, fading light (and consequently low SS) seems to be the main culprit. I gather your gear at the time would have probably not performed well at high ISO. Nevertheless I am glad you were fortunate to spend some time with the wild dogs and capture a few frames. Thank you so much for sharing with us

Warmest regards,