About B&W

"Magnificent Bull"

Although Kudus are about the most common antelope species around here, they are not at all that easy to photograph, let alone the impressive prime bulls. Being browsers they are always amongst thick bush. Their defensive strategy is to stand still in dense vegetation and only move until spotted. Their cryptic camouflage helps them being invisible. I was lucky to get a near unobstructed view of this prime bull. Using a long lens it did not even know I was watching it and I could isolate it at least a bit from the busy habitat. Taken in low and flat light this made an ideal candidate for a B&W conversion, through which process I could make the animal stand out much better from its environment. And that is actually the point of this post, to bring up the use of B&W in wildlife photography. In what situations/conditions do you think it works? One of the things I like about B&W, and I must admit that I do not do a lot of conversions and in general do prefer color, is that it offers a lot of creativity. Once you convert to B&W, there are so many ways you can convert. Photoshop’s B&W tool has several presets which already show you the different effects, which mimic the traditional filters and film types. The ability to fine-tune these to your personal preferences makes this even more flexible, creating endless looks to your images. Combine that with the endless other PS tools and effects and applying these selectively, and you can imagine that going B&W opens up another dimension. When converting to B&W, I suggest you do so in a layer, leaving the color background intact (and certainly not in-camera!). That way you can still play with the colors (below the B&W layer) with tools such as saturation/hue, selective color and color balance, which all have an effect on the B&W conversion. Often for example, extreme saturation, which would look horrible in color, can actually enhance the B&W conversion. If you haven’t done so yet, I suggest to go and play with B&W some time, you might be amazed by the results.

Just a FYI: I had heard many stories about Kudus jumping fences as high as 2 meters and always thought they were slightly exaggerated until I witnessed them clearing a fence at least 2.0m high from stand still myself! My jaw dropped and of course I was not ready with my camera…

Ever so now and then I get the question thrown at me: “what is your favorite animal?”. A question I do not really know how to handle as I do not have one specific favorite. Yet, the common but magnificent Kudu is certainly one of my favorite ungulates, even though they are bloody hard to photograph (IMO).

Greater Kudu Bull (Tragelaphus strepsiceros)
Backyard (sort of…)

Camera Model Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Shutter Speed 1/200 Sec.
Aperture Value f/4
ISO Speed 800
Lens EF500mm f/4L IS USM
Cropped to 4:3