I was staying in a tent on the banks of the Mara River, right on the edge, only visitor in camp apart from staff so spent the last minutes of daylight sitting on the bank watching these two hippos spar. Didn't bother to take photos as it was 6.30pm and getting quite dark but then I thought, in all my years on safari I've never seen hippos really fighting and these were getting closer and closer. Having nothing to lose I managed 2 photos before the light had gone, consequently I have had to do quite a bit of post production.
For anyone interested, this is what I've done to the image (any C&C very welcome);
USM on initial image; Nik-color stylizer; burn at 8% on some of background rocks, dodge at 8% on left hand hippos snout to lift it slightly from background; added high pass filter … inverted and added layer mask to bring back the detail in the hippos; opacity to 90%; added a gradient filter at 60%.
Would be interested in whether this works, knowing that some are a bit averse to over producing wildlife photos.
Techs: 7d; 300mm; f4; 1/125; ISO 800; HH;







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