Working a Scene

One of the challenges in wildlife photography is to try and 'work' a scene to create different angles and use whatever light you have to create striking images.  As you are dealing with animals who, most of the time, do not want to play along this is not always possible and you have to deal with the situation and make the best of what nature presents you with.

During our recent road trip to Namibia I had quite a bit of time to play around with different scenes and when I was working through the raw files liked the comparison of the images I got at one particular scene in Helmeringshauzen.

Just outside the hotel, which was absolutely phenomenal, we stopped at there was a scene that was just begging to be photographed.

This old car and lead tree as you would, I suppose, normally photograph them.  Pretty straight forward.

During the afternoon and next morning I played around with various shots of the same scene.  Below are a few of the variations I was able to get during our short stay in Helmeringshauzen.

Same shot as the first one but just made into a very simple sepia.  (Yes - a simple change in CS4.  Check previous Blog about editing digital images.)

Changing angle and using a little bit of flash gave me this result.

As the sun disappeared I used my beanbag and LiveView on the D300 to meter of the bright light through the vehicles grill and got this silhouette.

I got this image, probably my favourite, the next morning as the sun was breaking the the horizon.  The orange glow on the fence and the texture on the vehicle body made this an interesting shot to shoot but I quite like the result.

Can you imagine the images you would be able to get if the mammals and birds would allow you to 'work the scene' when you find them in the bush?  For now I guess we just have to think on our feet and fire away!

As always I look forward to hearing from you.

Until next time.

Gerry