I'll eat you RAW!

Hippopotamuses are ill-tempered animals! The look on this fellow's face already says it all, doesn't it? In fact the hippopotamus is one of the most aggressive creatures in the world and is regarded as the most dangerous animal in Africa because it kills more people than any other (with the exception of mosquitoes, which kill indirectly by transmitting the malaria parasite). Although normally you will not find them walking around on land during the day as they come out to graze at night, on very overcast days, as was the case here, you may come across one. Though hippos are not territorial on land, they can still be dangerous there as well as they are incredibly fast and can easily outrun a human being. So why, if they are vegetarians, are they such aggressive animals with such big canine teeth? One of the explanation for their bad temper is that they seem to feel that attack is the best form of defense.

This is an older image and has always been one of my personal favorites. Why is hard to explain; it certainly is not technically perfect nor jaw-dropping, but maybe it is just because it is not the standard hippo image or maybe it is a combination with memories of the moment and the way I captured this. I anticipated the hippo's movements through the bush, went ahead of him and waited in a good position hoping he would pass there. He did and gave me this peek-a-boo look from around the tree. Despite being my personal favorite I have never sold the image and it has never been published. The more pleased I was that it was selected the other day for publication in a magazine.

The original title of this image is 'Peek-a-boo' and the title used here was merely to attract your attention for me to share some practical things I learned about the use of RAW. When printing images at large sizes they need to be interpolated to that size to get the best results. I always used to process the RAW file in ACR at the camera's native resolution and only interpolate as the very last step after further processing in PS. Through my agent's PS specialists I have learned that it is better to already output at a larger size than the camera's native resolution from ACR. This will result in a slighter better IQ at large sizes. I tested this and sometimes it is not noticeable, but sometimes it is. The major downside of course is that your file size is much larger so you would have to weigh whether that is worth it for you. By the way sharpening on the other hand should not be done in the RAW processing stage, but as the very last step in PS!
Another thing about RAW processing that you may find useful is that you can actually also process a TIFF file with ACR. This will enable you to use the ACR functions and sliders, which in some cases might be useful if you are battling for whatever reason in PS.

I am sure some would prefer to see a vertical crop of this, so I include it below for comparison.

Sorry for the long write-up...

Subject: Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius)
Location: Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana
Camera Model Canon EOS-40D
Shutter Speed 1/200 Sec.
Aperture Value f/5.6
ISO Speed 200
Lens EF500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4xTC
FF