A couple shots from the zoo

[white]

Had fun wandering around the zoo the other day. I only had a chance to print two frames, and these are among the ones I thought were the best.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

The exposure is wrong on both images (or is it your PP?) and the first one is really not that interesting to me.

But that second one made me look and keep looking. What is that? Where is the animal? etc, etc. Very good. Maybe. What I mean is that it is interesting if there is actually an animal in there.

 

[white]

Hm, not sure I get what you mean by 'wrong exposure'. There is a good range of tones in the print; really, the only thing I probably should've done is burned in the upper left corner.

There's three ducks or small birds swimming in the second one. I had a good feeling about this one after I snapped it, but the picture has a slight 'telephoto effect' where the tree looks like it is flat on the ground, even though I shot it with a 50 mm.

No PP, by the way. I usually post my darkroom prints as-is because I'm trying to get better at printmaking and so I don't see the point in enhancing them.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Well, as I said, wrong exposure of bad PP. I can't really tell without seeing what came out of the camera.

In the first one, the upper left and upper right corners are blown. So is a big chunk of the rock the animal's tail is resting on.

In the second one, a large part of the water and the tops of the rocks in there are blown. The left half of the image is actually hurting (kind of) my eyes and maybe that is why I barely looked there trying to find an animal

I kept looking at the right side and saw (maybe) an elephant's trunk (I actually googled "photos of elephant trunks" to make sure I was right getting that idea out of the way...) or a gator in disguise. After a while I decided it was a chameleon like animal hiding from me


One thing I can't help you with is how to make them better. I must be really too tired. I mean I can't even decide if the contrast is too high or what.

Time to log off? Probably.

 

[white]

It might be my scanner's settings. It always gives me trouble. The white areas in the print aren't nearly as bright as they are on screen.

The negatives are mostly gray and there is a lot of detail. So I think I did okay in terms of exposure. If I remember right, when I shot these it was about 2 in the afternoon and sunny. So I printed them with a #3 filter to make the tones richer.

I guess I am just curious if people like these images, and why or why not. I seem to see a lot of animal close-ups whenever I view zoo pictures, and I wanted to include more of the environment and to create an appealing composition with whatever was there. Especially #2; I tried using the tree as a way into the photograph, but I didn't think it'd look so flat on paper.

 

[SwissJ]

I guess I am just curious if people like these images, and why or why not.

#2 I don't like cause, like you said, it does look flat, and I don't see much balance with the extreme lights and darks.

#1 I do like. A little too contrasty, but it has a nice range from black to white, especially in the water. I don't mind the bright area on the upper left cause it balances the dark area on the lower right. And the surface on the background rock is nice.

 

[reznap]

I like black and white edits and I like when they have good contrast but I think these are a bit much. I do respect that you developed them in a darkroom though.

I was also going to add that you went a bit wide/had too much background stuff... but that's what you're going for and I can appreciate that.