Black Rhino Calf

[Ken Watkins]

Taken at Rhino Safari Camp, Matusadona, Zimbabwe, 15th June 2009

EOS 1D MkIII

500mm F4 IS hand-held

F6.3, 1/500, ISO 400

The strange shapes on the lake are drowned trees, I am unsure what to do with these, the differing colours of the water are as taken.

[Harshad Barve]

what a cute dude this is , two birdies on back adding so much , BG is ok for as it is wild
all in all , lovely image
TFS

PS , which birds,

[Ken Watkins]

Harshad,

Thanks for your comments, the birds are I believe Red-Billed Oxpeckers.

[David Fletcher]

Neat shot Ken. The RB Oxpeckers on the back and the grass in the mouth are a nice touch!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Ken,
Very nice pose and detail on the rhino and even a bonus of nice positions on the 2 oxpeckers. I would crop off the top white band at the vey least and if so inclined patch/clone out the dead trees if that is within your personal ethics. The banding of the water is quite puzzlesome and therefore a bit distracting.......al I can think of is ripples/waves???? The feeding is a nice bonus.

[Ken Watkins]

Roman,

Cloning is certainly within my limited ethics, I am puzzled by the water as well. I will have a look and see what can be done.

[Ed Cordes]

Great image of a wonderful "little" guy. I agree with Roman re the crop from the top. I too would try to at least minimize the dark patches.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Ken,
Nice image. A peaceful feeding scene with the Oxpeckers on the back. I like the composition. The bright water takes away the attention. You can easily tone it down.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Morkel Erasmus]

nice one Ken! lovely light and exposure, the oxpeckers add.

I agree with Sabya to try and tone down the water. the dead trees in the lake would be better for me either cloned out or if your DOF was a bit deeper so that they were less OOF and more distinguishable to give a sense of place.

[Ken Watkins]

I tried cloning out the trees but it looked totally unnatural, any ideas?

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Ken,
I cropped the white line at top completely. I then used the clone stamp to eliminate most of the tree and then the patch tool to clean clone tool marks up. Mutiple passes of gausian blur.....contracting each pass .....starting with small amounts when I was near rhino.....increasing amounts as I got further away. I see Peter posted one when I was typing.....his is much quicker......I spent some mote time. Obviously you can vary the amount that you like. I definitely needed to be more careful....but you get the idea. I also did a LCE of 20/30/0....just to add a bit more pop to Rhino. More than one way to skin the cat.
PS Might go for a monotone light blue with more cloning/patching and blurring.

[Ken Watkins]

Peter and Roman,

Thank you very much for your great efforts, I find it a little eerie that both of the contrasting methods seem to produce much the same sort of result. All I need to do now is try to understand what you have done, both are much improved over the original

Ken