We all know that feeling I am sure when you are waiting for your subject(s) to move to the place where you want it to and/or where you anticipated it to go, no? I remember we were following this group of giraffe in the late afternoon and knowing they were going towards the open plains, where we could get great unobscured silhouette shots of them from top to toe, I decided to exercise patience and stick with them. However, there were so many tasty acacia trees along their route that kept them stopping for a bite all the time that their overall pace was slower than I anticipated. Meantime the sun was crawling lower and lower and we were simply running out of time; they would not reach the plains before the sun was down.
So we tried to make the best of it and luckily the multitude of long necks and heads sticking out above the bushes made for some interesting scenes.
Nxai Pan, Botswana
Camera Model Canon EOS 1D Mark IV
Shutter Speed 1/1000 Sec.
Aperture Value f/8.0
ISO Speed 250
Lens EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400mm
FF
Comments
16 commentsI feel like it's slightly bottom-heavy with so much black, though in this case the black frame is probably the reason. Though they're backlit and there are some glowing hairs on the horns, I do detect some extra halos around the giraffes as well. This is a challenging scene in terms of sharpening, I think... I bet you get the halos upon resizing even without any sharpening.
Max
I don't know, I think you're discounting the value of those trees in enabling you to capture the first know image of both a 3-headed and a 2-headed giraffe (along with a boring "standard" one-headed version) ALL in the same frame. Congrats! The 3-headed one grabbed my eye right off the bat and I loved it!
Regardless of your feelings about how this one doesn't match your preconceived idea, I quite like it. I do agree with Max about the amount of black space, and further agree with him that it may be mostly due to the black frame without a white pin line separating out the fields of black. So likely a non-issue on a non-framed version...
OK - as one who has never been to Africa I have to ask this: is the sky colour reasonably natural or has a red-filter augmented the hue? No problem with me either way - just pure curiosity (it's a gorgeous sky).
If I was pressed to come up with a nit (hey, it is a critiquing forum!) it would be a wish for a little more contrast on the trees and bushes immediately below the sun (i.e., so that vegetation was rendered almost as dark as the giraffes) - just to extend the highly "graphic" look of the bulk of the image to this area too...
Cheers...
Brad
This has a wonderful mood all its own, love it.
Of special note for me is that 4 of the 6 giraffe seem to be looking towards the setting sun, cool
Awesome Photo Vincent
Ken Archer
Jagdeep Rajput
Brad, I checked the posted ersion against the in-camera capture, which is a little more orange, but not much. Moreover this is not at all an unrealistic African sunset scene. Getting colors 'realistic' when it comes to these kind of silhouette images when shooting into a bright sun is always difficult as it all depends on exposure used and the WB setting of the camera.
I changed the frame color, black indeed was not the right choice Max, thanks!
Interesting Take , Way-to-Stick-it-out!! Perseverence... A Unique Image!
Nice Capture & thanks for sharing
Bill