the Jackal and the Stork

A superb capture that has it all. Great timing, sharp, great use of DOF and tells a story of our natural wildlife. Congrats Eugene, a great photo & very deserving of POW

This is a beautiful capture.Simple image with a lod message "Survival of the fittest".

I like all of the elements in this shot, but each time I look at it, I wish I could see more detail in the coyote. I realize you were at full zoom however, so I'm not sure anything could have been done about that, but the whole underside of the coyote, from the mouth down, is too dark for my liking. Do you have a shot without the exposure compensation applied? I wonder how it compares. Regardless, congrats on POW.

I well know this location , I visited Ngorongoro Crater three times. I just can say this picture is a good evocation of wild life there.Short DOF is good to show how that jackal works with his dead preys.

 

What is lacking is a dimension to give the size of that place ( diametre 20kms wide). But only one photo cannot give all...So, for me it's a good picture.

Nice capture. I like the fact you have the jackel with its catch and the white

bird in the foreground. The only thing I might do to the photo is have a tighter

crop, but it is nice as it is.

Fantastic shot, perfect DOF. Nice work.

Just for the sake of discussion, what do you think about cropping the top half off, so it

becomes a vertical frame? It might put more emphasis on the subject, and eliminate the

'distraction' of the flamingoes....?

Nature's Version of Recycling.

 

 

more commonly known as, Mufasa said it best, 'circle of life.'

 

Great capture, wonderful timing!

kudos

cg

thank you everyone for your attention and warm comments, and the Elves for the Award.

In replying to the qestion about the exposure compensation, I should say that for the meter at zero, the shadow detail would be clearer, however I considered the highlight losses on the jackal head and on the birds more severe than the dark shadows. The shooting conditions were on the edge of what the camera could handle, so there was a tradeoff. As far as the framing goes, I considered the horizontal frame too, but chose this one so that the jackal with a bird are seen clearer, as you pointed out in your comments. I also think that the flamingoes on the background are important in delivering the "feel of the place" so to say, which is why I did not want to make a smaller horizontal frame at their expence

I much prefer the other shot of the jackal...

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3474664&size=lg

 

As everyone seems to like this one so much, I will forego a point by point critique. Nice Africa portfolio though, and congrats on POW! Best, -Greg-

Yes, it is wildlife. Everything is working for that (catch, lake, birds in back and front grass). You caught half an hour of documentary film about jackal in one shot. Ok, photography could be mirrored verticaly, but that is not real. Excelent.

Eugene,

 

The exposure actually looked fine on my monitor at home, so I should retract me earlier statement in that regard. That pretty much leaves nothing to criticize about the shot.

 

Bill

Am I the only one that is a bit disturbed by the bokeh in this image?

Looking at the top half almost makes my eyes hurt.

Nope, you're not. It's a good capture, timing-wise, but the photo quality, including the bokeh, leaves much to be desired!

A nice study of hunter and prey - it is not far off from sort of thing I see when my cats return with rodents or birds. It isn't something I've really looked closely at, which is why I find the subject matter of this image extremely compelling.

 

However, I do find the grass in the foreground a little bit distracting and IMHO the depth of field is a little too shallow - the result of the latter being that it removes some of the information which would put the situation more into context. If there was a fraction more definition to the birds in the background, rather than them just being amorphous blobs, the photograph would work better for me.

A bit off topic, but for anyone who wishes to view a dramatic battle between a jackal and a stork, check out... National Geographic's "Africa's Animal Oasis" (1992), filmed in the crater. Excellent film photography! -Greg-

In response to a previous critique, I happen to enjoy the softer colors. Some may say flat, I say natural. I think the framing and compostion is text book on this shot. The DOF may be a bit too shallow, but I immediately recognized the flamingos in the background.

 

My main point of contention is the bokeh of the lens. I know this can't necessarily be controlled to easily by the photographer, but the way the flamingos are rendered is bothersome to me. It looks like some of them are doubled from motion blur even though there was no camera shake.

Is there a "hidden meaning" here? i.e. Photo.net staff "cleaning out" the multitudes of bird and insect pics that are now "de riqeur" on p dot net? While its a sharp image, I don't see it as all that special, in terms of composition. With the type of equipment used, most of the work is done by the camera and overall, I just find it to be another typical digital picture...that all of us now appear to be taking.

It is a nice moment captured and congratulations for that. The light though does not help the image at all..... I do not blame the photographer... he cannot do anything for that. I can understand why Greg S prefers the other photo of the jackal.

Not sure if anyone cares about my opinion, I've become a rather infrequent visitor around here.

 

The picture has flaws on several levels:

 

Composition wise is nice to have foreground middles ground and background but the movement of the jackal calls for landscape format.

 

Technically the bokeh is apalling. I don't know if it's the lens (which is supposed to be rather good), the body or postprocessing or a combination thereof and it really doesn't matter. The pink flamingos are such an important feature in the pic, that the way they are rendered really drags the pic down.

 

And last not least, there seems to be a touch too much of sharpening.

 

Overall a nice opportunity; not a total failure, but nothing to get too excited about.

 

I won#t rate your pic to spare us all some hazzle, but I'd gice it a 5/4 (O/A).

I've been watching this thread all week to see if anyone was going to mention the selective sharpening of the jackal and his/her immediate surroundings. I found it pretty distracting, but thought perhaps it was my monitor. It looks more pronounced on my laptop. So, thanks, Bernhard, for at least giving me hope that I'm not going crazy. I'm wondering if this had just come up in the "rate recent" queue, what the scores would have been. Or maybe I'm just out of touch. I really like the photo, and I'm no expert, but I found it strange that no-one had mentioned a couple of the technical aspects. Best Regards.

John Falkenstine - would you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by "another typical digital picture?" What about this photograph makes it typical of a digital camera? How is "most of the work done by the camera" in this photo but not in others? I want to understand what you're getting at; thanks!

I'm afraid I can't second all the praise being given to this image. The subject matter is very good but the photograph has let it down. For me the real subject is too small in the frame and is against the light which makes it doubly difficult to see any detail in. Furthermore the shot was taken exactly as the jackal (hyena?) moved in front of a dead shrub and consequently the outline of the subject has been broken up by bits of twig sticking out of it. The hyena's reflection is also obscured by the out of focus grass, which again detracts from the main subject. The out of focus flamingoes in the background just look weird. Remember the action photographer's mantra - VAT - Visualisation, Anticipation, Timing. For my money there wasn't much of this going on when you pressed the shutter.

At some point I would rave 7/7 and not consider other issues, but yes I could be framed better, caught at a more perfect moment, possibly improvments with PS, but some days you point and shoot at the the wind of time and you gets what you gets. Great work.

In Response: Most better digital cameras these days take really excellent images, speaking technically. There's tons of depth of field. Everything's nice and sharp, the light meter does a good job. So the end result is a technically excellent image, because virtually ALL of the activities and tasks that were associated with the activity of "taking a picture" some years ago are now NOT done by the photographer, who for the most part now points the camera at "something" and then pushes the shutter button. The end result is that some monotony of good exposure creeps into the images and an overall "sameness" exists, regardless of the content of the image. As a result, perhaps the photographer needs to actually work harder to show some originality or difference from another photographer...Merely pointing a camera at something and then having a nice sharp picture just doesn't cut the cheese for me. Then posting the image and expecting praise for an exposure done by an automated machine is just a bit weird. As noted before, I find this image fits the category of sameness quite well. While the subject matter is a bit different and of some interest, the actually quality of the composure is....."just like other pictures" and just doesn't impress me as being anything special.

John, not sure if its the camera that has done it or the affordability that the camera has offered. More and more people now can go out and take great images. The camera's are just so darn good. Things that 25 years ago might have been original are not anymore. It's getting harder and harder to be original with photography because so many people are out there doing it. Use to be photography was tough and sort of specialized. Not for the masses. Time invested in shooting, time invested in knowledge, time invested in developing and enlarging. Now it's click and post. So while I don't think the digital camera is really the issue here, it's the availability of it and how relatively easy it is too generate technically good images. Originality use to be a tough thing, now it is way beyond that.

 

I like this image to be honest with you. I think it offers a great moment in time. I just wish the subject was more open and showing more detail.

 

Dave