Chobe Chums

The sky is where it's at in this photo. Wonderful sky with lots of dramatic clouds. The elephants are just accessories. Love the two tones of clouds.

Thanks Peter. You beat me to posting the colour version - here it is

I love the bottom half of this. The clouds are fantastic contrasted against the elephants. A bit too much dark empty sky for my tastes, but overall I love this scene (in monochrome).

Max

The monochrome definitely for me. There appears to be some sharpening halo on the elephant backs. I agree with Max. I would be tempted to see what this looks like cropped back to a pano from the top.

I like the monochrome too. Agreeing with the others, I think a pano crop would enhance the image as that large, dark sky draws my eye away from the clouds and Elephants.

Hi Morkel,

Very nice 'scape - and my preference here is definitely the B&W version. While I understand the rationale behind going pano here, I personally prefer the crop as presented - to me it grounds the subjects more effectively than a pano would. I very much like how you've divided the frame and the lighter clouds rendered beautifully. Nice job on seeing and capturing that.

My only nit is that I find the upper portion of the sky too dark, especially when one looks at the colour version for tonal reference. In a sense this dark sky pulls my eye away from the dark subjects (the elephants). I think my preference here would be lightening up that portion of the sky more and then separating the tones between the darkest portions and that slightly lighter band that runs diagonally from just below top left through to about mid-frame (likely using a selective tone curve adjustment on just the top 1/2 of the image). Hope that makes sense?

Cheers...

Brad

The monochrome version is easily my pick! I like the across the water perspective and the tonal range of the image. I would keep the ratio of sky to elephant and whether or not to lighten it a bit I would leave up to "experiment and compare!"

A perfect candidate image for a strong infrared type B&W conversion indeed. Pano could work mayb, but I prefer the empty dark sky above as is.

B+W version works best for me Morkel.
The harshness of light and contrast that detract from the colour version all go to make the B+W really strong.
A pano version without most of the dark sky at the top would be interesting.

Great Morkel......much prefer the BW version, and I like the dark expanse of the sky.

Jim

Thanks for all the good feedback, folks. I investigated the pano crop initially, but I loved the expanse above and the tonality after conversion, so I left it like that as a personal preference.

I like colour version too, but B&W is realy excellent image. TFS.