squiver

Nice tight portrait and I like your choice for bw. The eyes could be sharper though.

Lovely colours and I like the shallow dof. Well done.

Nice structure and bw treatment - not sure about the sky though, it looks as if you've masked it and filled it with a darker colour, particularly visible along the edges. It may also be jpeg compression, but I doubt that caused it.

I'm a sucker for dead trees, and this is a very nice specimen. I like the glow on the clouds as well.

I just returned from this year's Wild Brown Bears workshop in Finland,and I suddenly realized I still haven't sorted out all the shots fromlast year's trip. So I figured I should start with that. :)

This is the one shot I was after for the duration of my stay at thisparticular location. Every morning there was this great ground fogwith gorgeous backlighting, and every morning I was hoping for a bearto cross from one site to the other. After three days it finallyhappened, and I almost missed it. This particular area has a muchlower bear density than where I usually do my workshops, so there wasa lot of waiting involved. That's ok of course, but eventually I got abit bored and was happy to see a small bird in front of my hide, andstarted to photograph it. I don't know why I decided to check thescene in the background again, but I did, and I suddenly saw a bearwalking into the scene. Five shots later I had already forgotten aboutall the waiting on the previous days and I just couldn't keep my eyesfrom the lcd. :)

Cloned out a small branch behind the head of the bear.

Hope you like it.

Nikon D3, AF-S VR 200-400/4.0, 1.4x TC, 1/250 @ f/16, ISO 1000,beanbag

I only comment so that you can have all of the different opinions and not just "yes-men".

I appreciate that - thank you for your comments!

The feeling this picture evokes is that of sympathy for the poor third-world-like animal. If you were going for that feeling congratulations, if you were going for more of a naturalistic wildlife then the scene is a bit unfitting. It gives off the idea that he is ready to fight at anytime

Jaziel - I don't have a clue what you mean by 'sympathy for the poor third-world-like animal'. It's simply a photograph of one of the prettiest of the big cats having a drink, I don't get your interpretation. This is as natural as you can get.

The left ear (right for the viewer) is pointed backwards to be able to hear what's happening behind him - they do this all the time and it's got nothing to do with being 'ready to fight'.

Thank you for your comments though. :-)

In wildlife photography there are basically two strategies you canuse; try to find the animal and photograph it when and where you findit, or wait for the animal at a specific location and photograph itwhen it shows up. For this image I used a combination of both.

When I'm photographing in Africa, I usually start long before sunrise- that gives me some time to search for a specific species, and when Ifind one that interests me, I simply try to stick around, waiting forthe light. The downside to this strategy is that you have little or nocontrol over what the scene will look like (unless you've trained theanimal to listen to your directions) and you just have to work withthe conditions presented to you. Most safari companies start aroundsunrise, which means that you're driving around searching for wildlifewhen the light is at its very best, and it may already be quite harshby the time you find what you were looking for.

If you know the area, and the animal behavior of the species in thatarea, you can also limit your search to specific spots where you knowthat your subject of choice appears regularly. The advantage of thisstrategy is that you have much more control over the shootingconditions - you'll be prepared. You can get a good view point with anice background for instance. The downside obviously is that nothingmight show up, and you could waste time and good light.

This shot was taken during a leopard workshop in South Africa. Westarted early to search for leopards and found one pretty soon. It wasstill quite dark, so we just sat back and enjoyed watching it for awhile. After a few minutes, the leopard got up and started walking.While we followed it, I tried to predict where it might be going sothat we could go there and get headshots instead of bumshots. :smile:I knew there was a small pool in the area that was on my list of goodlocations, and I figured that might be where the leopard was heading.Many animals start the day with something to drink, so it made senseto give it a try. So we left the leopard and drove to the pool toposition ourselves and wait. There's always the risk that you take thewrong decision and miss something spectacular, but that's also part ofthe excitement in my opinion: you never know what you're gonna get. Inthis case I made the right choice - the leopard showed up rightopposite our vehicle and we were able to take some great shots. If Ihadn't known the area and had not visualized this shot before, I wouldnot have been able to take this shot.

D2Xs, AF-S VR 200-400/4.0, 1/250 @ f/4.0, ISO 800, beanbag

No matter how good you are as a wildlife photographer, when it comesto finding the wildlife you'll never beat a local specialist. This iswhy on most of my projects and workshops I prefer to work withspecialist guides, trackers and biologists. On this occasion I wasworking with a biologist that was doing extensive leopard research inthe area and who knew exactly where to look for these elusive big cats.

One morning, we were searching the trees and bushes for leopards, whenmy guide suddenly stopped the Land Rover and pointed to a bush nearthe edge of a dry river bed: leopard. But no matter how hard I tried,I couldn't see it. It wasn't until we slowly moved a little closerthat I finally saw it, hiding deep inside the bush.

When I pointed my camera in its direction, the welcoming committee wasnot happy and I was greeted with a vicious snarl. I quickly took ashot and then decided to leave it in peace.

I usually go to great lengths to get clean and uncluttered shots, sothis one is quite unusual for me. That said, I don't mind the leafsand branches here at all, as I feel they add a sense of wildness tothe image in combination with the powerful expression of the subject.Most of the times when wildlife photographers show images of growlingor snarling big cats, they're actually in an early or late stage ofyawning. This is how a real snarl looks like. :smile:

Nikon D2Xs, AF-S 600/4.0, 1/50 @ f/5.6, ISO 400, beanbag

Great shot - the new version is a big improvement. Well done!

Nice moment, but a bit underexposed. The zebra right behind the frond one is unfortunate.

Straightforward but effective shot. Would make a great ad for a dentist. ;-)

Great scene and a fine shot. I agree that a profile of their heads would have made this perfect - as it is it leaves you wondering what species you're looking at. Great backlighting, well exposed.

Interesting high-key image. I like the effect, but the downside is that it doesn't look very natural - almost like you took the shot in a studio. Some fill flash would have brought out the detail on the face and brightened the eyes a bit.

Very nice - good use of foreground here. My only nit is that the sky looks too dark compared to the brightness of the foreground.

Great detail, composition and use of dof. I like the vignetting you added too. Color saturation is a bit radioactive though. Great shot!

The orange color in the foreground looks very unnatural, but overall I like the shot very much. I agree with the lack of sharpness in the foreground, but other than that - well done.

Great colors indeed. All this needs imo is a little boat to make it perfect. Overall the image suffers from noise/jpeg compression, particularly noticeable in the sky.

This was shot in an old, deserted diamond mining town near theNamibian coast, one of the most surreal places on this planet. I'llreturn to this ghost town in May and look forward to shooting hereagain. If it's still there that is. :)

Nikon D2X, AF-S 12-24/4.0, 2.5s @ f/16,ISO 100, tripod

Your horse images are stunning. Keep up the good work!

Of the African big cats, the leopard is by far my favorite. So when Iheard there was a mother with a cub in the area, I forgot abouteverything else and spend many days tracking and photographing them.

For the first two months the mother keeps her cubs hidden in densebush, rock clefts or hollow tree trunks. The cubs will venture fromhiding after six to eight weeks, by which time they can already climbtrees. The mother will leave young cubs for up to 36 hours whilehunting and feeding before returning to suckle them. The cubs areweaned at three months, but will stay with the mother for the first 22months. Only half the cubs from a litter will on average survive toadulthood.

This image was shot at sunrise in South Africa.

Nikon D2Xs, AF-S VR 200-400/4.0, 1/1000 @ f/4.0, ISO 400, beanbag.

Spectacular shot. The Northern lights are already impressive, but with a foreground like that it's just awesome. I'd prefer a little more room at the bottom though.

I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but I like it. :-)

A very nice scene Raif, and very impressive colors, if a little unnatural. I like the clouds here, but I must say that the blown out highlights in the middle are very unfortunate. A neutral density grad might have prevented this.

An African elephant is having breakfast near the edge of VictoriaFalls, Zambia - a very rare sight.

This image is now featured in the January 2009 edition of NationalGeographic magazine.

Hope you like it!

(If you would like to join me on one of my photo trips, please have alook at my website)