topic Re: Tête-à-Tête in Share Your Photos

Tête-à-Tête

Tronhard — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 23:46:25 GMT

I am unashamedly a wildlife photographer, and as such love both animals and the gear that lets me get up close and personal with them. The arrival of the Canon RF 200-800 is a significant change in the latter: not only for its reach, but for the sharpness of the lens that allows me to crop even further.
The following two images were taken hand-held and cropped in post to get the isolation and composition I really wanted.
Give that Zebra are evolved so that by standing together their strips created a disruptive pattern that confuses predators, it can also be a challenge to capture, and the classic image is one of a line of such animals at a water hole. Until I can get that one, these will have to do...

Canon R6II, RF 200-800@338, f/8, 1/400sec, ISO-200Canon R6II, RF 200-800@388mm, f/8, 1/400sec, ISO-200

Re: Tête-à-Tête

stevet1 — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:30:23 GMT

Trevor,

These are very, very good.

Steve Thomas

Re: Tête-à-Tête

Tronhard — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:48:28 GMT

Thank you for your generous comment, Steve. Not my best work by any means, but I have not been able to shoot for a while and it's still a challenge for me, especially with a beefy lens like the 200-800.
The originals were framed for a much bigger composition, which I shall post here, so the images above involve a lot of cropping that the camera and lens were reasonably tolerant of.

Re: Tête-à-Tête

stevet1 — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 01:35:53 GMT

Tre or,

These guys are so perfectly blended, that I didn't even realize that the mane on the zebra on the right in your first picture actually belongs to a third zebra behind the post.

Nature is amazing sometimes.

Steve Thomas

Re: Tête-à-Tête

Tronhard — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 03:05:27 GMT

You're not wrong. It's a constant battle between predator and prey, measure vs countermeasure and survival of the best adapted to the conditions at the time. On their own, zebras stand out like sore thumbs, but in a group they disorient and confuse their predators (and the odd photographer as well!).
For some camofleurs (camo creators) it was animals like the zebra that inspired the use of dazzle camouflage to confuse U-boats:

during WWII

Re: Tête-à-Tête

Tintype_18 — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 12:11:38 GMT

Very nice photos. Many animals on the veldt make up large herds for survival. I enjoy your photos. Keep 'em coming.

Re: Tête-à-Tête

shadowsports — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 14:32:13 GMT

Beautiful Trevor. Simply beautiful.

Re: Tête-à-Tête

Tintype_18 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 17:45:35 GMT

Trevor, the photo of the two should carry the caption, "Have you heard the latest?"

Re: Tête-à-Tête

Tronhard — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 17:31:52 GMT

Thank you John and Rick for you generous comments. For many shooting wildlife in greyscale is an odd thing to do, but there are some amazing photographers out there who have made that their style and are very effective with it. Removing the colour allows us to concentrate more on the nature of an animal, and makes such images into character portraits. 500D, EF 70-200@200, f/4, 1/400sec, ISO-400

Re: Tête-à-Tête

Tintype_18 — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 22:37:31 GMT

There is also the idea of safety in numbers. Witness a school (shoal to the Brits) of fish who dart as one cloud or group to confuse a predator. Then only a few at the perimeter are prey.

Question: Is the zebra white with black stripes or black with white stripes? 😁

Re: Tête-à-Tête

Tronhard — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 19:59:17 GMT

It's actually wearing pajamas!