Croc

[Glenn Pure]

I can see the competition for the theme this month is already very stiff. Here is a small contribution from me: a near dusk shot from the Chobe River in Botswana. This was quite a small, young croc (presume a Nile Crocodile?) maybe a metre long, wallowing in the shallows next to the river edge. Crop is minor (almost full frame).

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 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/800, f7.1, ISO 800. 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.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

What a beautiful creature captured well, Glenn. I like the low light angle helping to bring out the fine details. Also a fine reflection in that great shade of blue in the water. Well done.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Glenn- Good to see a croc and the reflection is great. That one stalk just in front of the eye annoys me but it was there so I too would leave it. Some of the hls on the croc are hot. Shooting from a boat I generally try to get a ss of about 1/1600. With this beautiful key light hitting the croc and the reflection there are possibilities for a more "artistic rendering" or OOTB such as going black on the bg.

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Glenn, was this shot from a boat, or were you at the waters edge?

Either way I would gone a bit more to your left to try and get the croc more head on to the sensor. I don't mind the shooting angle here because you have the reflection. The two stalks need to go, likewise the highlights in the LHC. If you can I would try to see if you can tease out a wee bit more detail & texture from the croc. With the angle of the croc your DoF will start to drift off a little, but it looks OK here???

TFS
Steve

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you for your comments and insights Geoffrey, Rachel and Steve. This was actually taken from a vehicle on the riverbank. The croc was quite close to the bank in a shallow channel. Hence the angle of shot and reflection which I also liked in this one. As for angle to sensor, agree a more parallel position or pointing towards me would have been ideal but this was something of a grab shot. In that regard, the snout is just starting to lose focus. It was the second day of my first visit to Botswana and I'm sure I wasn't thinking straight at all. The light and atmosphere that afternoon were simply stunning and added to my lack of clear thinking. However, not many photos worth keeping as the air was literally full of dragonflys which, on balance, detracted from most shots I got.

I generally avoid cloning but agree the upper left corner highlights could go. However, I wouldn't go further than that. It's by no means a perfect shot with lovely clean foreground and background but it is nature and does reflect the situation this croc was in. I imagine it deliberately chose a more messy situation as that provided more spots where small fish and other prey items would hide.

In terms of tonal rendering, I was conscious when processing this that some might think it a little to contrasty. It was a very contrasty situation in that light and I processed this one quite flat. From memory, I may have even reduced the midtone contrast as it was quite harsh. The specular highlights on the croc are blown and no point trying to recover anything there. Having said that, I could flatten the tones out a little more and may have another play with this one and repost if I'm happy with the result.

BTW Rachel, what is OOTB?

[Rachel Hollander]

Glenn- OOTB is "Out of the Box"

[Gabriela Plesea]

Dear Glenn,

I like your golden croc against the dark blue water and of course the reflection. Don't mind some vegetation sticking out of the water but my thought when I saw this was, a bit of gardening would be good (not too much, more like tidying up if you know what I mean). Also a slightly darker BG as per Rachel's suggestion.

Regarding HL, reducing brightness a tad would be nice. What I would also like is the eye to be more prominent. Otherwise, sharpness is there, love those patterns, colours look great, composition works!

A lovely image Glenn, well seen and taken. I would just give a little more attention to detail if it was mine.

Thank you so much for sharing, much appreciated and enjoyed viewing

Kind regards,