I promise I won't post ALL my favourite bighorn pictures from 2015 here, but I can't help myself on at least a dozen (or two, or...). What can I say...Josiah and I have been bitten by the bighorn bug and are hopeless fanatics for this species.
This one is from the 2015 rut in British Columbia. He wasn't the biggest ram, but he sure was feelin' it!
I chose this image to share because of the great look he's giving me here as he goes into flehmen response after catching a whiff of a nearby ewe. My daughter said I should name this one crazy eye.
This is about 90% of full frame with a slight crop from top and left.
Looking forward to your comments, critiques and suggestions...please view the larger if you have time.
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Nikon D600
Nikkor AF-S 500mm f/4D IF-ED
ISO 1000
1/320sec @ f/4.5
1 stop underexposed from meter
Mounted on FEISOL CT-3372 Elite tripod with Acratech GV2 ballhead and Wimberley Sidekick
Comments
6 commentsI agree with you, the stare and the extreme good eye contact the viewer has makes this image, as well the pose and the frameing of the head.
Technically the sharpness is right on and exposure also very good.
Interesting also to see the large 'chip' in the horn, a battle scar I assume. The overall 'dark' scene creates a nice depth and colour with good detail/sharpness where it counts. Personally I would reduce the prominence of the circular highlight LHS in the BKG, a very quick & easy fix.
TFS
Steve
The expression is for me what this is all about, and it is wonderful.
The white spot is of no significance to me as my eyes focus solely on the subject!
I think is a really good behavioural (documentary) shot that exceeds the quality of a lot of shots in that category. Lots of positives and interest points here - from the obvious (flehman display) through to the damaged horn and the crazy eye! And, I very much like the overall darkness of the image and background (and personally I don't find somewhat brighter "circles" in the OOF background to be a problem at all).
But...given this is a critiquing gallery...I do wonder if you unnecessarily went a bit too thin on the DoF here. Opening up the Detail View on a "standard" resolution monitor (100 ppi range) confirmed what I thought on other monitors - that the mouth region is on the soft side (DoF and focus-wise) relative to the eye region. This doesn't really show on the smaller sizes of the image or on a hi-res display, and normally wouldn't be much of an issue at all - but given this image is largely about the mouth region, I think it's pretty critical that the mouth region is sharp. When I look at your aperture of f4.5 you're almost wide open, and with a subject this close (and the background much further behind the subject) you could have easily stopped down a lot (and definitely sharpened up the mouth region) without having any noticeable impact on the quality of the OOF background (shooting dreamy smooth OOF backgrounds is more about the relative ratio of the distances of camera to subject vs. subject to background than it is aperture). Said another way...I think DoF on the subject is critical in images like this - and it is driven is driven by primarily by aperture selection - whereas the quality of the OOF zone is a secondary factor and is primarily driven by that ratio of relative distances discussed above (so you have to think of subject DoF and overall distribution of OOF zones as only partially linked considerations).
Cheers...
Brad