Trogon Photo Tours

December 2014 - This month's newslettter includes photos of wildlife taken at sunset and considers compositional issues and choices as well as camera settings.  It includes mammal images from South Africa and Botswana.

Bontebok -  photographed at Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, South Africa, September 2014.  Canon 5D3, 500F4 1.4x 1/160 F7.1, iso 1600, evaluative metering +1.0, handheld, full frame.  While John Tinkler and I were scouting for our upcoming South Africa tour we found this male Bontebok right before sunset on our way out of the park.  The buck was back lit with the sun setting behind him so I added exposure compensation to get detail in the animal.  The Bontebok is one of the real success stories in African wildlife conservation. It is endemic to South Africa and in the 1830's due to hunting the species only had 17 individuals left.  A farmer, Alexander van der Bijl, is credited with building a fence that would save those last few from being killed.  Numbers were low until the 1930's when a national park was created for them and their numbers have to risen to about 3,500 today.  Soon after taking this image I decided to get low and go for silhouettes as the sun was setting behind the buck. 

Bontebok - Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/400 F7.1, iso 800, evaluative metering at 0, kneeling on the ground, full frame.  This is an image I would consider a partial silhouette.  The goal on this shot was to show a bit of detail in the animal and the rim lighting with the sun coming from the back side.  So I dialed the exposure compensation back to 0 to reduce the exposure on the animal and to tone down the bright sky background.  I like this image and posted in on www.naturephotographers.net and www.naturescapes.net but it didn't get much attention and not everyone liked it.  Some thought the sky background was too bright. 

Bontebok -  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/1000 F7.1, evaluative metering at 0, kneeling on ground, full frame.  This image was taken a couple of minutes after the previous image.  More of the sky is included so the overall exposure was darker and additionally I darkened the image some in photoshop.  Again although a bit darker I would consider this a near silhouette.  It would probably be more appealing to most people because of the darker sky. 

Bontebok - Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/6400 F8, iso 800, evaluative metering at 0, lying on my stomach on the ground, full frame.  Next as the sun proceeded lower in the sky I went for the full silhouette.  I thought it was possible I would scare off the animal when I went from a kneeling position to lying down and I tried to pick out the exact spot where I could silhouette him next to the sun.  I wasn't paying much attention to my settings at this point and certainly could have dropped my iso to 400 but with the 5D3 producing little noise I don't really worry about dropping it below iso 800 very often.  At this point John Tinkler was calling to me telling me that we had to leave because the park would be closing soon and we didn't want to get in trouble for having to be let out after closing.  This was a pity because in another 5 or 10 minutes or so I might have been able to line up the buck's head in the setting sun.  By the way, it's best to use live view when including the sun in the image to avoid damaging your eyes.  I didn't do that in these instances, rather I would quickly focus on the buck, recompose and take the shot while trying to avoid looking directly into the sun.  Ideally I would have a bit more space above the sun here and I suppose that I could add some canvas and create it but I don't generally bother with such manipulations unless I think it's an incredible image. 

African Elephant and Egrets photographed September 2014 at Chobe, Botswana.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/1250 F7.1, iso 1250, evaluative metering at 0, balancing lens on boat rail to get a low angle, almost full frame cropped to straighten it.  During our recent Chobe, Botswana tour on a couple of the afternoon excursions I had them turn the boat around early and rather than rush back to our lodge we leisurely worked our way back, looking for opportunities to photograph animals and birds in the setting sun.  When we came upon this single elephant surrounded by various egrets and herons I thought it was worth spending some time with it.  This is a difficult image to get all the elements correct.  What I was going for here was to have a bit of detail in the foreground so you can see the herons and egrets while at the same time having the elephant silhouetted and not having the sky be too bright.  I think I pulled it off well here, this image and the next one are best viewed larger as the egrets stand out much better.  I like the comp in this image with the lone bird flying on the left and the sun above the elephant. 

African Elephant and Egrets - Canon 5D3 500F4 1/1600 F7.1, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0.  This image was taken just a few frames after the previous image as the boat slowly drifted backward.  This is my favorite image in the series.  I like the placement of the sun here as it balances the elephant.  Also this is the only image in which the elephant had curled up his trunk to feed so the whole trunk was just about above the horizon.   This image received very good reviews on the photo critique forums, several people said it was an "iconic" African image.  I will enter it in some nature photography contests next year. 

African Elephant - Canon 7D, 28-135mm lens at 135mm, 1/320 F9 Av mode, evaluative metering at 0.  During the same session I took a few images with a smaller lens.  This shot is cropped from horizontal to vertical.  I darkened this image a fair bit to try and bring down the brightness on the water and because the birds were too small in the frame here to try and make them an essential part of the image.  I like this shot but not as much as the previous two.  So those are a couple of studies on shooting wildlife at sunset.  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone, wishing you beautiful subjects in great light.