Wolf Portrait

Gallery: Man & FaunaPosted January 3, 2016484 views5 comments

One of the things I like about the "Man & Fauna" gallery is that one can also point out to instituitions that work for the conservation of nature.

Close to my home we have a wild park called "Hochwildschutzpark Hunsrück" that has had in the past a big area with wolves. That wolves were kept for a reintroduction programm for some national parks in Germany and Europe. One day they managed to escape and unfortunately hunters have been called to kill the animals since we live in a very dense populated area. As far as I remember three of the wolves have been shot and I never found out anything about the remaining ones ...

A challenge when photographing animals in captivity is to let the image look natural, meaning one has to see tthat fences are blended out or one has to look for apropiate positions to get a good looking surrounding. That is why for this image I decided to use a very big aperture allowing me to blend out the foreground and background fences. I also positioned myself in a place that allowed me to get a quiet natural setup. Anyhow due to the big aperture the result of the photo is more portrait alike.

CANON EOS-3, EF 2.8/300L, F2.8, 1/250s, Sensia 100, Tripod

Scanned with NIKON Coolscan 5000ED, Photoshop curves, sharpening, full frame

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Alberto Patiño on January 5, 2016 at 12:44 AM

What a gorgeous animal and a beautiful capture of his very intelligent gaze. I think that the wide aperture works very well here - or at least I like a lot, since this is what I generally tend to do when photographing animals. And I agree that "Man & Fauna" is an excellent concept, since every day we are more closely intertwined.

Registered on December 2, 2014, 278 Posts, 1736 Comments

Comment posted by Jerry Marella on January 6, 2016 at 6:33 PM

Nice portrait of this wolf, Cay-Uwe. The shallow depth works well and the background is out of focus enough to keep the attention on the expression of the wolf. Looks like a young wolf. Hope there are still a few around.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 142 Posts, 862 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on January 7, 2016 at 7:05 PM

A very nice job making this look natural, Cay-Uwe. I certainly wouldn't have suspected the presence of fences.

devil

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Brad Hill on January 9, 2016 at 9:29 AM

Hi Cay-Uwe,

Nice image and I totally agree with your point that one of main challenges of photographing captive animals is trying to make the shot look "natural". Your aperture choice here certainly did the trick - nicely done.

In terms of your other point about this gallery being able to showcase institutions working for wildlife conservation: Yes, I agree with this point as well, but it seems to me that the dead animals resulting from the "jailbreak" at "Hochwildschutzpark Hunsrück" doesn't really showcase positive accomplishments. cheeky

Cheers...

Brad

Registered on May 29, 2007, 431 Posts, 6061 Comments

Comment posted by Cay-Uwe Kulzer on January 9, 2016 at 12:00 PM

Quote: " ... but it seems to me that the dead animals resulting from the "jailbreak" at "Hochwildschutzpark Hunsrück" doesn't really showcase positive accomplishments. cheeky

Yes, it is a sad story and I wanted to point out the efforts of the wild park. Unfortunately the decision made to involve the hunters is out of the decisions of the wild park.

Registered on January 27, 2004, 494 Posts, 4021 Comments