The gathering

[Marc Mol]

Prompted by Steve K's request for a much wider perspective of this magical spectacle.
Here is a gathering of what turned out to be over 1500 gnu's (our guide's estimate) at a Mara river crossing from the Tanzanian side, as you can see from the sky, minutes later
the heavens opened up with a tremendous thunderstorm and put paid to photographing ALL of those 1500. Gnu's being gnu's took this as the perfect time to cross, images at this point in time were
almost a total white out.
A spectacle to be behold nonetheless.

D700 70-200VRII 1/125s f/13 ISO800@100mm. Mara river Northern Serengeti. Tanzania. Oct 2011

C & C most welcome

Cheers
Marc

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Marc - appreciate the wider view but for me the emphasis here is on the oncoming storm not on the wildies (which was obviously your intention) but the lack of detail in the wildies plus that they get somewhat lost IMHO in the cluttered terrain, this doesn't work for me. This almost looks more like a painting than a photo to me. I much prefer your other shots with more emphasis on the wildies and the crossings. I do wonder if it would have a different impact for me as a pano with much of the sky cropped out. I'm sure others will disagree as it probably comes down to more about personal taste than anything else with images like this.

TFS,
Rachel

[Marc Mol]

Hi Marc - appreciate the wider view but for me the emphasis here is on the oncoming storm not on the wildies (which was obviously your intention) but the lack of detail in the wildies plus that they get somewhat lost IMHO in the cluttered terrain, this doesn't work for me. This almost looks more like a painting than a photo to me. I much prefer your other shots with more emphasis on the wildies and the crossings. I do wonder if it would have a different impact for me as a pano with much of the sky cropped out. I'm sure others will disagree as it probably comes down to more about personal taste than anything else with images like this.

TFS,
Rachel

Thanks Rachel

I understand you, and this is very subjective, but I can assure you that as it hangs in my office in a 24x36 metal print the detail is all there and looks very nice......if i do say so myself.
Displaying for the web, doesn't do it justice unfortunately.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Marc,

I was just about the comment and read your response. Not every image will have the desired impact when viewed on a 800 pixels or 1000 pixels on longest side. In large prints, the details come out well and attract the attention of people.

In this case, I am sure in a large print the clouds will look good as well as the wildeebeasts. In this web version, just above the horizon the details in the sky and clouds are not great. In the print it might be better.

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Rachel Hollander]

Marc - It's that darn compression. Glad it looks good blown up. Cheers!

Rachel

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Marc , This is a lovely wide angle here . I missed the spectacle because they choose not to cross when I was there . For me the sense of anticipation does come through with this image , maybe because I am just back from there .