Photos and the Reasons Why

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Taken on April 12, 2010
Camera: Nikon D300S
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 105 mm
ISO Speed: 800

Location and Musings
Like Yesterday’s post, this one features an elephant getting washed in the river. It was taken within a few seconds of the previous photo. The elephants in question had finished their washing and were entertaining themselves by getting their mahout’s wet.

I was sitting on a bench a fair distance away taking this photo, rapidly switching from subject to subject. I was desperately trying to capture each of several different elephants and mahouts as they splashed water on one another.

Technical Thoughts.
This is a fairly poor photo. I chose it to contrast with yesterday’s. The dark skin of the elephant provides little contrast. She stands out from the river, but the spray from the water is very distracting. It doesn’t for a clean arc, but scatters all over the place and looks a lot like a really dusty scan of an old photo. This feeling is slightly enhanced by the washed out colors in the background. I suppose I could have edited it a bit to look more like an old fashioned photo.

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Taken on April 12, 2010
Camera: Nikon D300S
Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/400)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Musings and thoughts:
Mahout is a hindi word for elephant rider/trainer. The thai is ดวาญชาง or kwan chang. In doing research to write this blurb, I learned about the depressing processed used to break elephants to their lives as tourist attractions. It involves small cages, starvation, chains, nail-boards, and all sorts of other unsavory things. The process sounds rather miserable, but I suppose the elephants lead somewhatgood lives once they are done being broken. I’m not sure, I’m probably just trying to justify something terrible and my complicit guilt in the matter here.

Still, this is probably my favorite elephant shot. The mahout and the elephant appear to be sharing a rather touching moment as the mahout gives the elephant his bath. I like the way the elephant’s trunk rests mostly in the water, but just peaks above the surface so he can breathe. She looks pretty relaxed, sitting in the river with the mahout’s hand on his head.

Technical thoughts:
It is very difficult to take pictures of wet elephants in a river. Their skin turns from light grey to dark grey. The river, already dark green, provides no contrast. If I had lighting options other than the sun, I might be able to do something about this. As it is, I just have to hope the elephants are standing in a sunny patch or, as in this case, there is a nice lightly colored reflection.

Really, I couldn’t ask for a better position for the elephant. Her light colored trunk is nicely echoed with the lightly colored background above her back. The light-yellow reflection nicely transitions to dark green as it moves towards her head. The mahout’s light blue shirt is a nice contrasting color from the elephants yellow-orange trunk yet complementary color to the green water. The mahout’s legs echo the trunk color and contrast with the shirt color. The only thing I don’t like is the shadow on his legs from the hook strapped to his back. That’s distracting and undesirable.

There are also some very nice vectors here. The line from the elephant’s back runs straight up to the brim of the mahout’s hat, which then runs nicely over his head and down his other shoulder. Clean and uninterrupted. I could do without the little bit of water dripping from the basket. That is kind of confusing as it’s not quite clear what it is. It’s also a vector that runs down and away from the subject, down and away from the photo.

The vector running along the bottom of the elephant is also nice, with the mahout’s legs entering the river at about the same point as the elephant, the little bit of height difference is echoed by the curve in the trunk, so it’s forgivable.

I’m also a little concerned about where I cropped it on the left. There was a very undesirable log in the river in the upper left that I cropped out, so I could not have gone any further to the left. You can get away with cutting off an obvious edge like the hind side of an elephant, but you have to be very careful not to give people an uncanny valley “I should be seeing something I’m not” experience. I may be too close here.

All in all, a photo that I’m very happy with. I’ll put this one up there with Superb Starling Startlingly Stares at Me as “photos I particularly enjoy.”

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Taken on September 7, 2008
Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/14
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 400

This is a quite old photo which I still think of as one of my favorites. I took it at some random beach on the Oregon Coast one day while driving around. I thought the ball in the basket would look great as super saturated yellow amongst desaturated blues. It rare that a photo looks the same from in my head, to shooting, to post processing. Usually the final product and what I was originally planning on getting are quite different.

Usually you have to approach each stage as “ok, I have these tools, what can I make from this?” Sometimes “what can I make from this” is always the same.

It’s always a nice surprise when you’re able to achieve a close representation of your original goals. Perhaps that’s why I like this photo more than it’s fair share’s worth. I find that the emotion presented by the ball, neglected in the basket, the muted tones, and the two guys sitting on the beach is a nice, flat, attractive melancholy.

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Taken on November 21, 2009
Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 800

Location and musings:
This shot was taken at the Tiger Zoo in Sri Racha, the same place I took the tiger-through-the-hoop shot from last weekend. People putting their head in the crocodile mouth is a pretty famous circus trick, and suppose I’m not surprised they do it here. Before she puts her head in there, she spends a while banging a stick around inside the animal’s mouth. One theory is that she does that to remind the animal of the beating it will get if it closes it’s mouth. My theory is that it provides some sort of instinctual incentive to keep it’s mouth open. I’m unsure of how well a crocodile can be trained.

Also, she puts her head right up in the corner of the croc’s mouth, I’m sure part of the reason there is to keep the animal from getting much in the way of acceleration on the mouth.

Technical thoughts:
This photo was taken at the extreme limits of my old D40. At 200 mm, I was at the longest end of my longest lens. The photo has been further cropped, so that, with the additional APS-C crop factor, means this was probably effective 4-500 mm. I fired the flash, and it did have an effect, although not enough for the camera to register a return. The aperture is wide open. 1/125th of a second is the absolute minimum speed I could possibly imagine holding this shot steady. 800 ISO isn’t the highest setting the D40 has, but with the amount of noise that registers in the shot, I don’t think I could have feasibly bumped it up any more.

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Taken on December 4, 2009
Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 400

A few months back I found an obscene amount of traffic between me and the grocery store, the place I had originally set as my pancake material gathering destination. Instead, my destination turned out to be the King’s Cup White Sand Beach Jetski World Cup.

There was quite a bit in the way of grandstands and TV cameras and such built up. This photo was taken during the freestyle competition. I love how the water trail provides excellent evidence of where the jetski came from. His expression and hair are perfect. As I mentioned earlier, in action photography you want to be sure you capture the player, the ball, and the goal. Here the player is the rider, the ball is the jetski, and the goal is the water, which you can see in the background. Having his path be evidence is icing on the cake.

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Taken on January 16, 2010
Camera: Nikon D300S
Exposure: 1/2500 sec
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 500

This photo was taken at the “buddha on the hill” monument in Pattaya. It’s a half religious half tourist attraction between me and town. As you walk up to the buddha, the road is lined with people who sell birds in cages which you are supposed to release for good luck. The birds then return to the people with the cages, who feed and then sell them again.

Cats crawl around underneath the buddha looking for any birds that land too soon, or who are released too carelessly. Meanwhile some people pray underneath the statue, or make offerings to the buddha representing their date of birth, one buddha stance for each day of the week plus one extra for Wednesday. I’ll go into which image is for which day of the week later, probably spending an appropriate week on the matter.

I did a few edits to this photo, trying to figure out what I like the most. I ended up desaturating the reds and yellows on the cage in order to de-emphasize that and allow your eyes to follow the open door over to the bird. Ideally viewers will follow the arms up to the cage, then over to the bird. Theoretically people will identify with the unseen cage holder and with the bird, depending on which will appeal to them the most intensely.