Sunset Otter

Just returned from a week north of the border and am starting to process a few images that I managed in between the rain and wind. I'd not really had much chance to photograph Otters properly before and really enjoyed the challenges of concealing myself in the shore environment so I could watch them without being detected. This image followed a full day of rain and wind and there was about half an hour of setting sun and clear sky before dark. This is a large dog Otter in the middle of eating a fishy snack on the seaweed. He carried on fishing shortly after and appeared very close to me for a drink of fresh water (I'll post that one later).

1D3 700mm ISO:1600 1/640 sec @ f/5.6 taken lying down in dry part of a stream channel between rocks. This is about 60% of the original image due to the head direction of the otter, I cropped the rest of the scene to the right.

Thanks for looking

Simon

Hi Simon,

Lovely atmospheric shot

Well done

Nice image Simon, I would love to get a good close view, only ever seen them at a great distance.

I like the feel of the shot but do find the brightest area of water overly hot. Not sure what you could have done about it though.

I like the way the top half of the image is almost a copy of the bottom half. I also like the contrast of the brightness of the reflected sunlight and the darkness of the otter. Very atmospheric.

Very nice image. Love the mood.

Terry

Loads of atmosphere Simon. Really like this.

My first thoughts when I opened this in work this morning appears to have been the same as many people; ie very atmospheric. You were very skilled (or fortunate or bit of both) that the otters head was placed on a lighter part of the background. If your viewpoint had been slightly lower you would have lost it. The rim lighting has worked really well. Very nice indeed.

Very atmospheric, like the composition, super image.


Phil Newman

Very atmospheric Simon.

Cheers

Austin

Hi Simon, very atmospheric picture.

Lovely image of the otter, one of the better I have seen. Great feeling and atmospher!

Erik Koffmar
Uppsala/Sweden

I like that a lot Simon, well taken.

Matt

I like this quite a lot but the brightness of the reflected light in the water just in front of the otter lets it down a little as it pulls the eye down into the frame away from the rest of the environment. Might try tweaking it down a bit and adjusting the levels to remove the artefacts from the boulder on the extreme bottom LHS above your copyright.

Brett

Ps. Having looked at it again their are quite a few artefacts all over the image, I guess it's where you've tried to recover some of the darker areas..?

Hi Simon,

Lovely image, bet that was a nice experience, I'm looking forward to seeing the next image. I agree with Brett though, quite a few artefacts showing in the dark areas, perhaps due to the high ISO and crop. Might be worth having another play with the processing.

Cheers,

Lewis.

Thanks for the comments all, re. the artifacts Brett, I can only see these if I push the brightness on my monitor right up. I guess they are due to the downsizing for the jpeg as they don't appear on the raw or tiff files I have.

I'm guessing but I find that sRGB is a really poor colour space for these kind of subtle colour images - I've had the same issues with blues in ice. There simply aren't enough different browns in sRGB I think for it to be rendered well. The artifacts will go away in adobe RGB or any printing colour space.

Any shot of a wild Otter is a good one in my opinion Simon, most of us will never get to experience this so well done on the capturing the image.

Andy...

Very nice shot .

Bob.

Fantastic atmosphere captured in this shot