I photographed this Elephant in the spectacular Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania this past April. It's an amazing experience to have these huge elephants casually lumber past the vehicle. I envy those of you who live in Africa and can visit these areas frequently!
For PP I used mostly curves on the entire image and then selectively on the BG and the elephant. I also added some canvas on the left, including the tip of the ear. But I had no other similar photo to add the sliver needed on the elephant on the right. Comments and critiques most welcome.
Certainly has a magnificent set of tusks, lets hope he keeps them!
Well done on adding the canvas, very hard to reclaim your image when you have no space. I do feel that the elephant could do with some extra depth to it by adding some contrast and extra black and it appears to have a slight colour cast. I think you can extract more impact from this handsome creature with a little more work. He perhaps could use some more USM as well.
The other option is to do what Harshad suggests and experiment with some closer crops.
An impressive tusker. IMO the tight factor isn't that important, in fact I find it emphasizes the size of the animal. I agree with adding a little more contrast and blacks, and maybe saturate the green grass a little for punch.
Thank you everyone for the advice. I will add more contrast and try an even tighter crop. Alfred, do you mean did the elephant come any closer? Most certainly! He walked right behind the vehicle and I'm sure some up of us just naturally ducked! I did get even closer shots. In fact once we had elephants so close that they literally brushed against the vehicle! I so wanted to reach my hand out and touch one!
Hi Nancy, Too tight left, right, and bottom. A vertical pano crop would be better if still a bit tight on the bottom.... Impressive creature and sharp.
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