Crocodillo
Dec, 2010Views
2034
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Contest Finalist in Above The Surface Photo Contest
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Behind The Lens
Location
On the Tempisque River just outside the Parque Nacional Palo Verde in Costa RicaTime
Around 4 PMLighting
The picture was taken under ambient light conditions which were lightly cloudt that dayEquipment
Sony Alpha 550 with a 75-300mm F4.5-5.6 Sony lens at 1/160 sec; f/10; ISO 200 The focal length was 300 mm Hand heldInspiration
I love taking wildlife photos and the Tempisque river is rich with birds, white face and howler monkeys, various lizards and crabs. Its also well known for having these large crocodiles, often found basking in the sun with their mouth open. On this day, this crocodile was swimming towards us and as he came closer I was able to focus in on his eyes and shoot off a few good shotsEditing
The coloring of the crocodile body was left as I saw it. I did some sharpening in Photoshop Elements and accentuated the eyes with a tiny bump up in saturation.In my camera bag
These days I shoot with a Sony A77. I have a Sigma 150-500 zoom telephoto lens which I recently used on a trip to Africa. My kit lens is Sony's 55-300 mm zoom. I also carry a Tamron 90 mm macro lenses. I carry several filters including a circular polarizer, a graduated ND, an adjustable NDFeedback
In animal shots, I focus on the eyes. A photo of an animal with any blurring in the eyes, no matter how perfect the rest of the photo, always seems slightly off. I like to get two eyes in the photo just like you would do with a portrait of a person. We rarely take profile shots of people. What makes this photo is looking into the crocodile's eyes and wondering what they are thinking and then looking at the rest of the croc. The spikes and the length of croc (which is unclear as it fades off) makes it clear this is not a creature to mess with.
