Master and Apprentice

Gallery: WildlifePosted December 19, 2015112 views4 comments

I know that that's not the way Elk do things and I'm not even sure the youngster's a male, but that's how it looked when I processed this image. This was taken in the meadow along the entrance road to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park during the rut in 2014. An excellent place to camp, but it does stay pretty full. To get direct lighting in the afternoon required shooting back toward the highway (hidden behind the line of brown ferns and grasses) so I have way too many frames with cars and/or road signs in them.

7D, 300mm f4 ISL + 1.4 TC, hand held, f/8, 1/640, iso 320, aperture priority, pattern metering. Processed in LR5 & CS6. Cropped to 12.6 Mpixels in a 4x5 aspect ratio partially to eliminate the butt of a female most obviously in estrous. Taken at 3:21 pm on October 19, 2014.

Since I don't do much willife photography, I'd be most grateful for suggestions on what I might have done to make this better.

Thanks,

Comments

4 comments

Comment posted by John Tobias on December 19, 2015 at 9:03 PM

Dennis, my guess is that this is a female, but just a guess. I like the composition, and the details and colors look good to me. Are these Tule elk? Not sure what you could have done different with your trying to keep the cars and road out of the photo. Also looks like it would not have been possible to shoot from a higher or lower POV. Nice photo as it is. Thanks for sharing.

Registered on September 12, 2009, 2120 Posts, 6455 Comments

Comment posted by Richard Sandor on December 19, 2015 at 9:06 PM

Dennis: this is PDG (pretty darn good) as is. The male's antlers are positioned against a clean background, the pose of both animlas is fine as is the composition. My only suggestion would be to burn the brighter oof elements in the immediate foreground. Congrats! Richard

Registered on January 12, 2014, 453 Posts, 1625 Comments

Comment posted by Ken Watkins on December 20, 2015 at 4:05 AM

Dennis,
In my experience you do not often see youngsters with Dad, so i tnk this a rare capture.
Looks like the light was not with you, but not much you can do about that,

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

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on December 23, 2015 at 1:51 PM

In my experience it is unusual for a large bull to be near a calf like this and the calf seems small for so late in the season. Probably the nearby female was the mother. Techs look good and you managed a catch light in the youngster. Perhaps some careful selective processing on the bull's eye would pull out a little more of his reflectivity, too, which would be an enhancement. The only other thing I can suggest would be to allow a little more space all around, but you already mentioned another animal compromised your options. All said, this is a keeper.

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