Young Bucks at Play

Gallery: WildlifePosted October 8, 201451 views4 comments

Shortly after the 2 bucks from yesterday did their thing, these 2 skippers decided to do a little practice as I can't believe they were actually serious about the rut. But practice makes perfect. They only spent about 30 seconds doing what they needed to do and left. Why can't the big guys duke it out in the open like these two? Ah, the mysteries. This is a full frame photo but I had to make a few adjustments to get things looking somewhat natural due to the 2 kinds of light. So after adding some warmth, saturation, contrast, and clarity, I then took out some of the highlights and whites. I'm not completely satisfied with this but it's at the limits of my skills right now. Sorry about the unintentional crop to the left. Due to the quickness with which this developed, I missed getting the comp correct. You'll see that the guy on the left appears redder than the one on the right. Looks like he's still has some summer coat hairs which is causing that. The larger photo is a bit soft but I still think the photo documents a key rutting behavior. Your comments would be appreciated.

Tech Info

Canon EOS 60D with EF 70-200mm f/4 at 200mm
1/320th at f/4.0 and ISO 1000
tripod
Lightroom 5

Comments

4 comments

Comment posted by John Tobias on October 8, 2014 at 8:55 AM

Nice one Peter! Good catch of the action between these two youngsters. It is interesting the two different coat colors. Not that I could tell you how to do it, but I think the image needs a bit more contrast. Thanks for sharing.

Registered on September 12, 2009, 2120 Posts, 6455 Comments

Comment posted by Richard Sandor on October 8, 2014 at 11:32 AM

Peter: my comment will reflect a purely personal preference. Given a choice between a soft photo or a noisy one, I'd always opt for the noisy one. Noise can be addressed somewhat in post, while the soft photo is beyond my capabilities. Richard

Registered on January 12, 2014, 453 Posts, 1625 Comments

Comment posted by Gary Reed on October 8, 2014 at 4:17 PM

Hey Peter, I like this one a lot. The summer coat on the left side is common. I think you could run a high pass sharpen filter over the deer. Add a little more black level and lastly a crop to this taking out a 5th from the bottom while keeping the nice warm glow at the top. This would center the fighting bucks. Great job.

Registered on September 19, 2009, 198 Posts, 1074 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on October 9, 2014 at 4:13 PM

You are having fun! From photographic perspective, I think some more space on left would be a great improvement. The bright, bright sunlit area in upper left is pretty distracting, but I don't know how you could have worked around it.

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