Yep, elephants again… It may have eluded you, but they are my favourite animals as well as my favourite subjects.
On this lovely afternoon we were observing a bunch of Elephant bulls drinking, mud bathing and swimming at a little dam, when a breeding herd of Ellies came to join the party from the other end. The discipline reflecting here from the single file approach lasted only until they reached the muddy section where they played their hearts out. Thus this is not the most fun image from that afternoon, but surely the one with the strongest composition. What does bother me a bit though is the fact that it is quite evident that the dam is a man made one…
Madikwe Game Reserve, South Africa.
Camera Model Canon EOS 1D Mark IV
Shutter Speed 1/125 Sec.
Aperture Value f/6.3
ISO Speed 800
Lens EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 130mm
Almost FF (small rotation correction)
Comments
10 commentsCharlie
I love the strong composition here, the single file of ellies with the reflection and the layered approach enhanced by telephoto compression. The dam isn't a big nit to me at all...
Beautiful light here and great atypical Elephant marching.
Not as man made lookiing as Etosha, and certainly not intrusive
I don't mind the dam but do wish for a better light.
Jagdeep Rajput
PS. Your image just reminded me, I haven't posted an Elle for a long time.
Cool shot and I wouldn't even have thought about the pond edge being a dam unless you pointed it out. So that's a complete non-nit/non-issue for me. But I do quite like the general composition (especially how you split the frame) and those reflections are great.
Two other comments: In an absolutely perfect world the tiny bit of overlap between a few of the elephants would disappear! But, like I said, it's already very minimal, out of your control, and hardly an issue at all. Second...y'know, I think this MIGHT work better (tho' it works very well already) if the elephants were a silhouette (thus adding more contrast to the overall scene). If this were mine I might even initially try pulling back the global exposure by enough to turn the elephants to silhouettes - I suspect a dramatic image might be waiting to be revealed. If that doesn't suit your taste, perhaps a more selective exposure (and/or contrast) adjustment would be another way to approach the silhouette concept).
But just thinking out loud - hope it makes sense...
Cheers...
Brad
Ken Archer