The Kruger National Park photos

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Aug 312009
 
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Here they are, finally – post-processed, the best of the best of what I took. Please comment and make suggestions, I am after all a beginner studying.

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  • http://aligunduz.org/blog/ Ali Gündüz

    In general, the main object (i.e. the animal) seems to too much blend into the environment. I’m guessing it’s mostly due to the similarity of colors. Although I’m not doing photography for quite a few years and my ideas should be taken with a grain of salt, my suggestion would be to try to separate the main object from the rest either by causing more color differentiation (there are quite a variety of techniques for that) or by keeping the field of focus narrow, or both.

    I’m also guessing a polarizer would become useful in African daylight.

  • http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

    Hi Ali,
    What you are pointing out is a problem with nature photography in general. You want to preserve the reality as much as possible since you are, after all, representing the natural world – but the natural world is not trying to pose for you. Animals blend into their environment for survival purposes.

    For the most part, I tried to limit my dealing with this to cropping and removing as much superfluous background as I could without losing all context, thus focusing in more on the subject animal. Another is while shooting to very specifically bring the subject into focus while maintaining a fairly narrow depth-of-field which blurs the background and thus makes it have less impact.
    This worked to greater and lesser degrees depending on the shot, the specific background and the animal,

    As for a polarizer, that’s something I will definitely consider, during the harsher daylight hours it could make a very positive difference.
    Having now obtained my book on gimp for photographers, I’ll start learning more about things like color differentiation techniques that may bring these creatures to their next level.

  • http://andreinafrica.com André

    All-righty. Had some time to go through the whole range now :)
    Bravo AJ, You’re up and rolling.
    Some observations. All MHO of course. Please feel free to ignore or abuse if so inclined :) )

    1. With digital and the web, it’s just too easy to post up EVERYTHING. And in so doing, dilute your great shots. I’d suggest a finer comb for the publishing. Obviously, friends and family and people who were there, that’s different, they get something from all 3,4,5 shots of the same scene. But you’re not snapping just for them, are you? :)
    Case in point: 3208,3213,3216. 3213 is the winner by a mile. The fabulous colour contrast, and the little girl’s gentle smile, and the pose. The other two have much of the same, but are not in the same class.

    2. Take care when RAW processing. It’s very easy to lean too heavily on the sliders and commit pixelcide. They’re born to be punished, but it’s a symbiotic relationship. We can’t survive without them, and our art thrives when they are healthy.
    Examples: 3776 and 3777. Muzzles and knees (the dark areas) are bustin’ out in red :)

    3. Be aware that when your images are all one size, except a single which is alot smaller, the display mechanism may upscale that image to fit the gallery tool and pixellate the b-gsus out of it. Ick.
    Checkout 3284 in Piclens.

    Right, all the negative out the way :)
    I’m green with jealousy at your Fish Eagle, Cheetah and Leopard.
    I’m also impressed that you got so many winners, first time out. Applause!
    In reply to Ali, there’s a conflict of needs here. Standing in the bush, that’s what it looks like. In winter everything dries and drabs into each other, the dust gets everywhere and even the bright animals start to look like sepia. So, on one side, the truth. This is how it looked. On the other side “Yes, but I can make it look better!” Indeed, but should you? It’s a balance.

    My faves:
    3710 – They have such great confirmation, and the shaded light is very gentle and pretty.
    3325 – If you’d paid him to sit there, you couldn’t have planned it better. The visual echo is superb.
    I like this one over the others (also very nice) for the head position and the eye catchlights.
    3213 – The fabulous colour contrast, and the little girl’s gentle smile, and the pose.
    3246 – Just cos that’s how easy they disappear…

    And that’s my 50 cents :)

  • http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

    Hi Andre, thank you for the comment, it’s a great uplifter so early in the journey.
    I take all your negatives to heart – in fact, on reading them – I found myself nodding in agreement, they are all, very good advice.

    The fish eagle was sheer luck – we were driving along and saw it coming in to land, we’d seen several already and it was somewhat far so we wouldn’t have stopped… except I noticed he had a fish, that was something new. I took well over 50 shots with a Canon 70-300 zoom lens (my dad was using the 50-500) but mine were badly underexposed. This was why I had to up the exposure a lot to get the color back, and only those few shots actually survived my culling. The results are fine for the web, but probably way too noisy now for print – and even then there is a distinct blur on the wings which I just couldn’t avoid unless I wanted a black fish-eagle.

    The Cheetah was a case of bad luck – he had been walking peacefully along the road, we approached really slowly – would have been a lot of really great shots in wonderful light (it was just an hour after sunrise, solid daylight, but still soft). A car from behind came by, stopped next to him, looked for a moment, then rushed off scaring him off the road. We trailed him for half an hour, glimpsing him through the bushes only now and again – and shooting whenever there was anything visible – this was the one shot that was actually useful.

    The leopard – now that was a tough shot. She’d run across the road in front of us, then jumped into a culvert, we stopped right by it, I couldn’t even get my lens close enough to aim at her – but my dad got some shots of her hiding there. So I gave up and sit back, then just as suddenly she jumps out and runs across the road in front of us again, by sheer luck – my earlier giving-up allowed me to lean forward fast and snap her through the windscreen – giving the only shot of the entire event that showed the head. I am quite proud of it, it was dusky and the light wasn’t great but I managed to take what I consider a pretty good shot with literally less than a second to spare.

    I relooked at each one you labeled a favorite, I must say outright thank you. I can see them – especially 3710 in a very different light (no pun intended) with your comments and praise there.
    3325 and the rest of the Berghaan pix were hard to choose from, because he had sat there for quite a while and I got a lot of shots, it was a nightmare to pick it down to just three, but those were such that other than a bit of cropping, I left them essentially unedited, there was just nothing else I could find to do :) (This either means I wasn’t critical enough of them, or they were really good – but you liking one certainly leans my view toward the latter).

    The amount of winners ? Well, a lot of it is luck – we spotted the banded mongoose, you usually don’t, having been to the park almost yearly all my life helps – but still, what you see on any given trip can never be planned. The other major factor is that my dad is a very skillful photographer (he is the one who got me hooked on it) and he was in the car with me teaching me tips as we went along. In the evenings he would look at my work of the day and give me hints and advice on how it could improved – you should see a marked difference between the first day and the later ones for example – that was his influence. I was not just shooting but getting a crash-course in nature photography from a pro :D

  • http://N/A Peter Betts

    AJ you need to learn how to use photoshop and brighten up your pics and to sharpen them..Look at that Kudu Bull crossing the road….Cars in the B Ground area no no and the pic uis soft soft and dark…In Kruger try and go NORTH of the Letaba River…No Cars and more dust roads…Havea look at some of my shots on Outdoorphoto…the walking lion taken long before the sun got up and they are sharp and full of detail and no cars…Nikons D lighting also helps as do the killer sharp Nikkor lenses…that should be your ultimate aim…go Nikon for bright sharp pics

    Harsh words but reality in Wildlife photography

  • http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

    Hi Peter,
    Unfortunately for me – the only camp that had any space in August at all had been Skukuza.
    I do understand your critique but I can at least say that I am genuinely making an effort to learn – this was my first real photoset, do compare it with others – I don’t use photoshop because I’m a Linux user, but I have been studying the tools I do use very hard, and buying books on them, and documenting the basics here to pave the way for others: http://silentcoder.co.za/tags/photography/

    Basically, you have to start somewhere, those were my early pictures and harsh criticism is welcomed, it’s helped me to improve a great deal already – and I’m a long way from done :)