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Following on from my last photographic post, I have finally sorted my Gorilla shots properly. These are, I think, the best of them. As some mentioned about the last shot to go up it was soft, and I have maaaaany soft shots from the day. However these to me seem to be all I'd hoped for when leaving for the trip. While I can't go back and re-shoot these, any criticism is appreciated as I love shooting wildlife at home as well and it all helps.

Some background on the day(skip it if you just want the shots!): We hiked up and very steep hill for about an hour and an half before cresting and walking about another 300m to find the Gorillas. You are only allowed 1hr with them, after which the guards get VERY antsy. Being on the border of the Congo and Rwanda, you are escorted by two armed guards. I'm yet to decide if that makes it more or less comfortable. We stayed two nights at the bottom of the mountain, in a place called Bwindi (spelling may be wrong) which was amazing also. It is all in the middle of a national park and we got to enjoy a dance put on by a local orphans group. Shooting was tough as they kept moving, foilage was always in the way, there were 8 of us jostling for position and the light was variable, and they were oftern in shade.

Aside from the challenges being this close to these guys is just magical!

On to the shots!

Looks a tiny bit washed out, did you use a polarizer?

Otherwise pretty cool. Any chance of some wider pics showing the surroundings. Or even pictures of the guards?

Zeeps wrote:Looks a tiny bit washed out, did you use a polarizer?

Otherwise pretty cool. Any chance of some wider pics showing the surroundings. Or even pictures of the guards?

Mmmm, backed of the exposure a bit after the fact on most of them as, being dominated by black, they were a tad over exposed. Could go back a tad more I suppose. No poloriser, just the trusty 18-125.

Should be able to dig out some sceenery shots from the day. I'm afraid the guards didn't like their photo being taken and I figure they're shots are less friendly than mine!

This is us trying to chase them after they went walkabout. They had just been sitting on the flattened area.

http://users.tpg.com.au/jondawes/africa ... 27-600.jpg

This is a shot in the opposite direction showing the area.

http://users.tpg.com.au/jondawes/africa ... 55-600.jpg

Cheers.

dawesy wrote:

Zeeps wrote:Looks a tiny bit washed out, did you use a polarizer?

Otherwise pretty cool. Any chance of some wider pics showing the surroundings. Or even pictures of the guards?

Mmmm, backed of the exposure a bit after the fact on most of them as, being dominated by black, they were a tad over exposed. Could go back a tad more I suppose. No poloriser, just the trusty 18-125.

Should be able to dig out some sceenery shots from the day. I'm afraid the guards didn't like their photo being taken and I figure they're shots are less friendly than mine!

Believe it or not, it's actually better that you overexposed a bit. Provided you shot in raw you can bring the exposure down half a stop or so and preserve all of the shadow/black details!