Mud Bath

This photograph was created in Bandipur National Park. The same mother and cub which Bibhav had posted recently. I would have loved some more eye contact, but they moved away from us. Got this one interesting action. I have the entire series of this mud bath, thought this one shows the action the best.

Canon 50D, 100-400 L IS USM, f8, ISO 200

Comments and critiques welcome..

Lovely capture, agree about the eye contact. Would have preferred more space to the top and left though.

Agree about the eye contact. I also suggest a crop to exclude the tree trunk at top right.

Apana

fantastic image, would have loved more space around and small highlight recovery...

A nice image. A bit more space at the top would have been great so that the entire dust cloud would have been captured. It would have been superb if the elephant were parallel to your image plane. I agree with Apana regarding the branch at the top right corner. Well done.

Nice image. the body patterns look good. The action is nice. agree abt the tree on top.

Thanks all for the comments.

For more space on the top, zooming out more would have included more of the tree on the right as well as some plants in the foreground. So to get most of the dust cloud as well as to keep some space at the bottom I composed it this way.

Not sure if that was the ideal way to compose, suggestions welcome.

Nice capture.

The late setting of monsoon in the Western ghats seems to have created a very tough times for the elephants and other large mammals.

The mother looks week with bones very conspicious and poorly nourished.

Vanishing corridors is the cause of these catastrophies. Had there been connectivity, elephants from scrub and deciduous jungles like Bandipur and Nagarahole can take shelter in dense jungles like Brahmagiri, Pushpagiri etc.

This seasonal migration from drier to denser places is observed in elephants and other big mammals for time immemorial.

They are now forced to confine in the PAs and are hence poorly nourished during harsh times.

Things can go worse if monsoon altogether fails.

That's why no conservation measure without landscape level planning is not successful.

Recently I have seen lot of elephants in Bandipur in poorly nourished conditions as you have mentioned. We are making it hard for them to live :(.

Thanks for the information.