forestgnome said:
This has renewed my interest in a shot I took last September. I was shooting this young bull when anothercame along and scared him away. I got some nice shots of the larger bull, but when I reviewed the images I was surprised by this parting shot of the young bull. I didn't expect it to be anything, but I thought there was something cool about the image and I was thinking 'impressionism'.
Now, the focus is off, so I haven't really worked with the image. I wasn't prepared for the action shot. But, I wish to get something like this with sharp focus and blurred autumn color.
Nice image, forestgnome. You are very close on the pan technique and perhaps not far off the focus. I suspect this image could be sharpened some in Photoshop or other software. Panning takes practice, and an understanding that not all captured images will work (even by photographers well versed in the technique).
On the subject of action shots, and some on digital manipulation. Around 1994-5 two images from the same Frans Lanting swinging orangutan photograph ran in two publications a few months apart. I believe it may have been Outdoor Photographer and Smithsonian magazines, but one of the pubs might have been a National Geographic book. I have not had time to search them out in my disorganized library. The image was similar to this
orangutan image. Perhaps this is an outtake from the same day, or maybe it is just a similar image from a different outing. Copyright dates are not necessarily indicative of when a photo was initially captured. Frans frequently shoots this subject matter and is a master of the genre.
It appears that Frans may have been close enough to use a bit of fill flash. A flash should not become the dominant light source; to keep the background from becoming too dark. I doubt that a departing moose would be spooked by a flash, but I don't know whether you are close enough for flash.
One of the two published Lanting images was printed reversed (left-right) which is not an unknown printing error. But on close examination one image was clearly digitally enhanced. The background sky was apparently a mix of blue with white clouds. In one image there were more white streaks, and in the second many of those white streaks had been colored in with the blue shade borrowed from the blue streaks. Otherwise the images were the same but reversed. It is possible both images were manipulated to different degrees. At the time I took the two images into a photo club for discussion, and also to two of my photo instructors who happened to know Frans. The images were published shortly after the infamous June 1994 Time/Newsweek mug shots of O.J. Simpson, and digital manipulation was still a very hot topic among photographers (it still is). Frans' manipulations appeared to be very minor, and did not alter the impact nor the basic integrity of his documentary image. There was a consensus among my small group of photographic acquaintances that Frans' manipulations were acceptable, although perhaps unnecessary.
