River Walk
Northern Thailand 2007
This was shot at an elephant camp near Chaing Rai. The mahouts had just finished scrubbing and sloshing the elephants. It looked like fun. The elephants helped out by shooting water from their trunks over their head onto the mahout. The barefoot mahouts clambered over the animals as they worked. I didn’t see one fall into the river.
I shot a lot of elephant pictures that day, but I wasn’t too happy with them until recently. It was dark under those trees and I was inhibited by the ‘rule’ not to up my ISO beyond 100 if I wanted the best quality photograph. (I’m one of those people who pay attention to rules.) I kept my ISO at 100 and as a result, when I got home and looked at my pics, I could see the ‘blacks’ were blocked up. Not good. Now here we are 6 years later and software has evolved. I can unblock the blacks without getting too much noise.
The reason not to increase the ISO is to minimize the ‘noise’ level, or that hideous blotchy look the dark areas get. I didn’t want any noise in my photo. At the time, noise software didn’t work that well. If it reduced the noise, it also made your photo soft.
My other problem was the length of my lens. I had a wonderful, fast lens that was my favorite. 28 to 105 mm, F 2.8. I remember standing on the bridge that crossed the river you see in the photo above and wishing I could zoom in on a particular elephant or mahout. This is the best I could do. It works, though. It helps that the elephants form a semi-circle. And there is enough detail to keep it from being a silhouette. Silhouettes aren’t my favorite. I do like the way the light hits the swirl of the muddy river water turning it to gold. So ‘jungly’.
I like that word “jungly”. It is used in India to describe someone from the country…”a jungly boy”.
If you want to see more photos from the elephant camp click this link:
http://www.rosemarysheel.com/archives/elephant-working