Wild Elephants

[Sadananda Koppalkar]

It was evening and getting darker and it was a first wild safari I ever took. With hardly any sightings we were about to return but then we heard a sound of these mammals walking to river through the thick bushes. We then drove to the near by waters where these mammals were expected to come and waited for 20 min and then herd of elephants arrived for a quick drink and dip and then Wow what a wonderful sighting.

Location: Bandipur National Park
Nikon D90
SS: 1/60s
ISO:800
F/6.3
Focal length: 380mm

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Sadananda,
It is thrilling to see wild elephants in your first safari. To top it, you saw them in the water. I am sure, you would remember the antics of the small calf for a long time.

Which lens were you using? The image is a bit soft. It is probably due to the low shutter speed. Also, the elephants were moving. So it was not easy either. Increasing the brightness a bit and some sharpening will further enhance the image.

Which software do you use for post processing? Do you shoot in Raw or jpeg? Look forward to more images from you.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bibhav Behera]

Sabyasachi has pretty much asked and commented on the things i wanted to point out. :)

The calf in the middle is secure on both sides due to the two females present. Elephant females are very protective of their calves and often in a herd, all females will help protect a calf of a particular mother apart.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Welcome to IndiaWilds.

Nice first post. Liked the composition. Its good you got them all facing towards you. Sighting a calf is really rare. It might have been a great experience to see them all splashing water. The water splashed by the calf while drinking enhances the image further.

Look forward to more..

[Sadananda Koppalkar]

Hello all,

Thanks a lot for your inputs.

Hi Sabyasachi,
I used Sigma 150-500 lens. It was pretty dark that time and I had to bump up ISO and Image turned out to be softer. This trip I shot all the images without RAW.
Yet to buy a software for post processing. To be frank I am using Picasa right now. Please let me know which do you think would be better, Adobe photoshop or capture nx? I am in dilemma.

Sadanand.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Hi Sadananda,

I would suggest using Adobe Lightroom. This is a photography software program developed by Adobe. That is one of the best software available for post processing your RAW files. The latest version available is 2.6.

You can refer to this link, if you are new to Lightroom -
http://www.indiawilds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2287

Do post if you have any queries regarding this.