The Look

Well, I guess you probably could guess I couldn't go too long before posting another bighorn image!   Instead of losing interest in my favourite wildlife subject, my passion for sheep and photographing them is only growing. I'll do my best to find at least the occasional other subject to post as well. 

When you find a group of rams, it's hard not to quickly scan the individuals and identify the one with the largest horns and zero in on him. As my years photographing this species progress, I'm beginning to also look for the sheep who show the most interst or have unique looks, or just seem to display some aspect of bighorn behavior more distinctly. 

This young ram is such an individual. He repeatedly drew my attention from "Broomer," a handsome full-curl ram with a heavily broomed (broken tip) left horn. When he walked over and bedded down right in front of me, I swung my lens over in case he gave me a look, and sure enough, once tucked into his grassy bed, he immediately lifted his head and rolled his eye back at me to make sure I wasn't up to anything, and I squeezed the shutter. 

The decision to go black and white with this one was based on a couple of things, but honestly the first impulse was I had several portraits and behavior shots with the same beautiful blue background of the mountain rising just a few miles to the southeast, and I thought I should maybe give a conversion a try. While thinking it through, I got more intrigued with how his OOF back might render in monochrome, and liked the character of his face and especially the contrast of the overcast light hitting his upturned profile against the darker mountain. So I fired up Nik Silver Efex Pro and immediately bought in. 

Now if it was only a bit colder out and he exhaled to create a dramatic explosion of steam, eh? 

I went with a little different comp here, but it just felt right to me (even though that surprised me a little, as I generally like my subjects strongly offset with lots of negative space). If it doesn't work for you, I welcome your suggestions for alternate comps, but this is about 85% of original.

If you have time, please click the image to view the LARGER version for better detail. Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions. 

Nikon D600

Nikkor AF-S 500mm f/4D IF-ED

ISO 250

1/320sec @ f/5

-0.3EV

tripod mounted

Converted to B&W using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 with adjustments to lower overall brightness and increase contrast slightly, with additional dodging in PS CC2014, cropped to app 85%