Repost w/ JCBB portrait 1

Gallery: WildlifePosted June 5, 2010103 views5 comments

This is one of the trio of cubs I spent a lot pixels on. I know some will not like the ear being out of frame, but when a bear is moving toward you at close range some techniques go on full auto and you just keep shooting and you look for the eyes. I also thought about removing the small spec of grass on the nose, but decided to keep it. What do you think?
Thanks for looking.

Canon 20D Canon 70-200 2.8 w/1.4 ex. =280mm 1/80th @ 4.5 iso 100

Comments are always appreciated.

Neil

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on June 5, 2010 at 3:31 PM

Neil I think you this came out well. Usually I would be more concerned with the clipped ear, and I guess in a perfect world it would be shown without clipping, but here it does not draw my eye very much. This is nice and close up and the lines of negative space, legs and triangular head seem very well placed, so the structure of the composition carries the day. I like the angle of the head, the nose and the bit of green, as well as the pleasing green background. I see a little softness in the eyes, so my only suggestion is to apply some additional sharpening (carefully), especially to the cub's right (left side of frame) eye. I also like the somewhat intangible mood/expression of this young bear. Thanks for sharing this one!

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

Comment posted by Ajit Huilgol on June 5, 2010 at 10:49 PM

Neil, I find this guy's eyes quite fascinating. They look cock-eyed (squint); know what I mean? His right eye seems to be looking straight, but his left eye is on you! Strange!

Registered on December 19, 2008, 302 Posts, 2055 Comments

Comment posted by Dan Walters on June 6, 2010 at 2:51 PM

Love the eyes and the detail in the bear. Would look really nice as a vertical as well.

Registered on October 30, 2005, 405 Posts, 3693 Comments

Comment posted by Marsel van Oosten on June 7, 2010 at 8:12 AM

Neil - you are right that the cropped ear bothers me. In this case I'd make a more deliberate crop, probably crop the whole ear on the left off and half of the one on the right. The green bit doesn't bother me at all. Overall, the shot does not appear as sharp as it could be - my guess is this is a result of the relatively slow shutter speed; 1/80th of a second for a moving subject is seldomly fast enough.

Is it correct that this was shot three years ago? Not that I can see it, just curious (I saw the copyright notice).

Registered on March 9, 2004, 285 Posts, 2277 Comments

Comment posted by Neil Rossmiller on June 7, 2010 at 10:44 AM

Yes, Marsel.
This was shot in 2007 along with all of the other brown bear photos I've been working on since joining NPN last October (Africa images from 2001 or earlier).
I must credit you for discovering the condensation issue I had on that trip and Rick Gomez for a work around. Rick had a similar issue I noticed in one of his post and came up with a fix. Takes a bit of time but has moved several images from the "For my eyes only" folder.
I'm not as fond of the repost crop as my original post, but others may disagree

.
Thanks everyone for all of your input, my education continues.
Neil

Registered on October 30, 2009, 156 Posts, 749 Comments