Under the Blue Sky

Gallery: WildlifePosted May 31, 2009250 views7 comments

Hello all,

I thought I'd try to dwarf this guy in his landscape rather than go for a frame filler. A horizontal frame wasn't really possible as he was pretty close to the road, so I went for this vertical instead. Does this work, or is there just too much empty space and sky?

70mm, f8, 1/1000s, iso 320
A blend of two exposures from the same RAW file - one for the foreground and one for the sky, and then some selective curves and saturation to make the elephant pop a bit more

Thanks for looking,

Billy

Comments

7 comments

Comment posted by Stephen on May 31, 2009 at 10:49 AM

Gorgeous! Beautiful composition.

Registered on November 11, 2007, 42 Posts, 803 Comments

Comment posted by Robert Bunch on May 31, 2009 at 1:41 PM

Nice elephantscape. I guess it might have been better if more of his trunk showed but tall grass precludes that. I like the placement of the elephant in the frame.

Registered on May 18, 2004, 124 Posts, 2503 Comments

Comment posted by Floris van Breugel on May 31, 2009 at 5:08 PM

I like the idea, but there is a bit too much sky I think. What about a 4x5 vertical crop?

Registered on December 19, 2008, 306 Posts, 4840 Comments

Comment posted by Andrew Yip on May 31, 2009 at 8:49 PM

I like this kind of "critterscape" and I think this one works pretty well. Possibly you could have tried including a little more grass in the bottom of the frame to balance the sky more, while still keeping the sky as a dominant element.

Registered on May 7, 2008, 130 Posts, 679 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on May 31, 2009 at 10:34 PM

I think the size of the elephant in the frame is fine, but the amount of sky, which is mostly featureless, is a waste of your pixels!

How about the same lens in horizontal format, giving him a sea of grass and a broader expanse of background?

Registered on December 9, 2007, 258 Posts, 9892 Comments

Comment posted by Billy Fairburn on June 3, 2009 at 6:30 PM

Thanks for the comments, appreciated as always! Lon, the road curved around him so I couldn't really go wide horizontally.

Thanks,

Billy

Registered on March 3, 2007, 123 Posts, 717 Comments

Comment posted by kiran khanzode on June 5, 2009 at 10:05 PM

lovely composition, I wonder how a pano crop might have worked here.

Registered on February 21, 2009, 83 Posts, 428 Comments