Southern Right Whale + Repost

Gallery: WildlifePosted March 13, 2015260 views6 comments

Another shot from our South Africa trip last September. We do a boat trip each year to photograph the Southern Right Whales in False Bay off of Cape Town. Last year we had good luck with quite a few breaches. This is cropped from horizontal to vertical. You can see from the techs that we were pretty close. The background is the town of Simonstown, a suburb of Cape Town.

Nikon D7000 Sigma 150-500 at 220mm 1/2000 F8, iso 800

Comments

6 comments

Comment posted by Luke Ormand on March 13, 2015 at 6:34 PM

Wow what a spectacular image. The water that's being sprayed off the whale looks much more grey than I would expect - but obviously I wasn't there so can't speak to it. Even the colors in the background look a bit muted.

Btw, what's with the Nikon + Sigma combo??

Registered on February 4, 2009, 1093 Posts, 7035 Comments

Comment posted by Nate Chappell on March 13, 2015 at 6:47 PM

Thanks Luke, I will take a look at reworking this one. It's not an easy process with the bright spray of water, the dark whale and the background. As far as the Nikon-Sigma combo (most people know that I usually shoot Canon) I bought a Nikon body a few years ago because about 40% of the people who go on my workshops shoot Nikon and I wanted to be able to help them better with their settings etc.

Registered on February 1, 2006, 1158 Posts, 19528 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on March 13, 2015 at 11:24 PM

The choice of framing really emphasizes size! Excellent. I agree with Luke about revisiting processing on the white spray. In almost all wildlife captures I prefer to not see evidence of human activity...but in this case I think it adds interest that this whale is breaching so close to human settlement. Again, impressive capture.

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

Comment posted by Jagdeep Rajput on March 14, 2015 at 6:12 AM

Hi Nate!
Terrific frame, nice contrast of nature and the presence of man.
IMHO it would benefit from more canvas on both the sides.
Jagdeep Rajput

Registered on April 29, 2008, 686 Posts, 2857 Comments

Comment posted by Nate Chappell on March 17, 2015 at 11:27 AM

I reworked this by making the water, whale and splash lighter while keeping the background the same color as the bg was too light when I lightened the whole image. I did so by increasing the exposure in ACR and then applying a darker layer to the bg in photoshop, while maintaining the brighter foreground, whale and splash by using a layer mask.

Registered on February 1, 2006, 1158 Posts, 19528 Comments

Comment posted by Ken Watkins on March 25, 2015 at 11:18 PM

Nate,
I could think of a lot of local photographers who would give anything for an image as good as this, in particular for postcards

Registered on December 15, 2010, 1537 Posts, 4877 Comments