Oxpecker jockeys!

[Marc Mol]

Sth Luangwa Nat Park - Zambia

Nikon D2Xs, 300 f/2.8VR, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/800s @ 300.
Some work in CS3, due to the harsh midday light.



C & C most welcome

Cheers
Marc

[Sudhir Shivaram]

That's a nice perspective shown here. You have handled the hard lighting condition very well through your PP. Also I liked the way you have composed the image.

[Beth Goffe]

I love oxpeckers and giraffes. They're both cute in distinctly different ways. :) The coloration of the giraffe is interesting; darker than those that I had seen in Africa when I visited last year.

I like the idea of this image but there are a couple of things that don't work for me. The main thing is the light, as you mentioned. It's quite harsh and is from the side, creating bright spots and shadows on the birds. I'm guessing you did the best you could in CS3. You got a pretty good head angle on the first one at the left but the other two are facing away from the camera. You might also crop a bit from the left so that the birds aren't in the middle of the frame. I hope you get another chance at a similar image because it's a great representation of oxpeckers doing what they do best. :)

[Daniel Cadieux]

Here is different crop which I think and hope you will find is stronger. I thought there was too much open space at left. I also lightened some of the darker areas especially on the birds, and removed some of the bright highlights in the BG.

Having said this two out of three birds have a bad head angle, and the other is borderline. You already know about the harsh light and it would have been great with a better light angle too, but you can't really setup a scene like this at will!:) I love the texture you managed to capture on the giraffe, very cool!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Nice capture and BG. Daniel's repost improves it and I would only add a tad more room left and bottom.

[Vincent Grafhorst]

I love the poses and composition here Marc, but the corrections you made in PS to undue the harsh light effect made the colors of the giraffe look a bit unnatural IMO.

[Arthur Morris]

Lots of folks are missing an important point here. While the light is relatively harsh the bigger problem has to do with the direction of the light. With harsh light is it absolutely imperative to work with the sun coming right over the top of your head. Here, with the light hard from the right, there was not way to make a decent image without using lots of flash.. And Daniel's repost (thank you sir) only shows that when you work off-angle in relatively harsh light you are a D-E-A-D D-U-C-K.

[Marc Mol]

Arthur
Appreciate the comments, yes, flash should have been used.
However, the light was not from the right , it came from virtually directly overhead, taken at midday, check the birds shadows.

Cheers
Marc

[Arthur Morris]

Arthur Appreciate the comments, yes, flash should have been used. However, the light was not from the right , it came from virtually directly overhead, taken at midday, check the birds shadows. Cheers Marc

Hi Marc, You are close but incorrect. Though the sun was high, the light is from the high right; note that the left side of each of the two birds on our right is at least partially in shadow while the right side of these two birds is fully lit. (The bird on the left is facing to our right "into" the light.) Note also that the shadows to the left of the birds are longer and larger than the shadows on the right. QED. :) :) :)

[Marc Mol]

Hi Arthur

Time taken was 12 48 pm ;).
So I suppose we can meet in the middle.:D

Cheers
Marc

[Arthur Morris]

No middle. Being well off the proper light angle when working in harsh light leads to big problems but only 100% of the time... :) :) :)

[Marc Mol]

Not quite what I meant Arthur, I do agree however that bad light angles do not make for perfect images.
If we ALL submitted perfect images here, we wouldn't really be learning anything. ;)
This image was submitted more on a composition level.

Cheers
Marc