Saturday, June 7, 2008

Weekly High Five #2

So here goes with the second of the Weekly High Five. This week was very difficult as there have been some great new images added to the Photo-Africa Stock Library.

The following images all caught my attention for some reason. Let me know what you think and whether there were any other images added in the last week that caught your eye!

Image 1 - Elegant Grasshopper Close Up by Gery van der Walt

There were a lot of these Elegant Grasshoppers in Madikwe this year and I am sure quite a few images captured of these colorful creatures. What makes this specific image for me is the eyes which looks as if they are staring right at the camera. Perhaps the two feet (where they come together) could have been in the shot but not a major worry. Overall a nice macro image.

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Image 2 - Elephant Drinking by Gavin Tonkinson


Out of many images of Elephants drinking, this one has something special. The eyes looking straight at you. The ears folded back and out of sight makes him look quite cute. The bottom lip with the water dripping off it also creates a nice 'dynamic' feel to the image. Nice ellie image.

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Image 3 - Brown Veined Whites by Bradley Leighton

This image works. Whether as an abstract or as an insect behavior study it has something special. One of the first things any photography teacher always teaches you is to look for C-curves, diagonal lines and triangles when composing your images. The first thing I noticed in this image is the way in which the group of butterflies all 'work together' to create a triangle from bottom to center top. The only things that kind of distracted from this great image was the one butterfly creeping into the image from the right and the body of the first butterfly is slightly chopped. Not enough to worry about and the abstract feeling combined with the lines on the wings make for an all over great image.

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Image 4 - Sepia Springbok Landscape by Gavin Tonkinson

Simple but very striking. When seen full screen this image pops! The diagonal line created by the herd of Springbok in Madikwe leads the viewers eye perfectly to the leading animal who seems to know where he is going. The one slightly distracting thing was the horizon that seems to be slightly skew to the left. Took me a while to decide whether it is in fact skew or whether it is not just the diagonal line of the Springok that leads you to think it is. Not a major worry though. I also quite like the hill in the top right corner as it creates distance in the image and makes you feel like they have been walking for a while. I would buy and frame this one.

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Image 5 - Lake Sunset by Kevin Linforth

I might be biased towards sunsets but this image works for me. The flower sitting in the middle almost pointing to where the sun was a few minutes ago is the obvious feature of this image even though it could maybe have done with a little more lighting from a soft flash. Moody and beautiful I am going to go with this as my favorite image of the week.

I look forward to hear your thoughts and comments on the above images!

As you know all of these and other images can be viewed and purchased at the Photo-Africa Stock Library so make sure to check back there on a regular basis as they guys are uploading great images almost every day!

As always I look forward to hearing from you!

Gerry



5 comments:

Mike said...

Hi Gerry, stunning shots this week, I think I will have to agree with you on the sunset shot it looks great and unusual with the flower and reflection as the main focal point, shame about the grasshopper needs to be a little brighter and a bit more colour or I think this may have been my favourite.

That Squirrel said...

wow, they're so beautiful! I so badly want to go to South Africa... especially to see the breaching sharks!

SAPhotographs (Joan) said...

It is difficult to choose a favourite amongst all the wonderful photographs. If I choose one, it would have to be the elephant but only because I love them.

Sandpiper (Lin) said...

This is really beautiful. I absolutely love the colors in this and the perspective is tremendous.

Sandpiper (Lin) said...

I didn't realize this one all one post. I should tell you that the other pictures have such great character - the first two are really unusual!