Elephant close-up

[Mrudul Godbole]

This is one of the photographs taken in Bandipur. There were some bushes infront of it, so cropped a little from the left, but still couldnt avoid them completely. It saw our jeep and raised it trunk, but didnt trumpet. Just managed to take a few photographs, before it walked off.

Canon 50D, 100-400mm L IS USM, ISO 200, f6.3, 1/60, hand held, full frame.

comments and critiques welcome..

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice pose. The eye contact is good. It is sharp despite handholding at 1/60 shutter speed.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Great close up, this is typical behaviour of elephants trying to smell the human presence. Was the light a bit harsh especially on its forehead? If light is harsh do we set a higher f no & reduce iso? trying to clarify my doubt

[Mrudul Godbole]

I had exposed for the highlights. The light appears harsh as the image has both light and shadow areas. However, the highlights as well as the blacks have details. While clicking I checked the graph and the highlights in the preview. Checking the graph after clicking a image, helps to decide what changes in the settings are required or if changing the composition would help.

A narrower aperture would have got the shutter speed further down. The ISO was set already low at 200. Increasing the ISO would have helped to increase the shutter speed.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Harsh light is a misunderstood word. Any bright light gets a harsh light comment. So let us examine what is soft light and harsh light:

When the light is low in contrast, we call it soft light. In softlight situations shadows are minimal and diffused. Soft lighting results in saturated colours. Soft lighting results when the light from the Sun is diffused ie. when there is a cloud cover and the sky acts like a big diffuser or soft box. Soft lighting also is found during fog. Soft lighting is found in early morning and in the evening. This is because Sun’s rays passes a longer distance through the earths atmosphere.

Any light which directly falls on a subject without being diffused by any medium. That means if you are raising your pop up flash or directly attaching the flash on the camera and firing it after that “say cheese” (well some people do that to animals as well) then the light is not soft light, as it creates deep shadows.

Similarly, the light that falls on the subject when the sun is overhead or very near to noon, on a clear cloudless day produces deep shadows and hence is not considered as soft light and can be termed as harsh.

We can also get shadows with directional lighting. In late afternoon light, when the sun is low in the horizon and falls on the subject at an angle, then one part of the head can be in light and the other part can be in shadow. In this particular case, the lighting is from the side and the shadow part of the head is facing the photographer.

While composing one needs to take care that the scene being photographed doesn’t contain a huge difference in tone between bright and dark areas.

The best part is to expose to the right. So that there is sufficient data in the shadow portion to further open up during post processing.

In these situations, a fill flash can also be of help. However, most of the times people don’t understand the use of flash and also in a number of forests flash is not allowed for normal photographers like us.