Amboseli Giraffe

Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction

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Image Description

Taken on a dry lake bed in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park.

Technical Details

Sony a1, Sony 100-400mm @ 100mm, manual exposure f/9 at 1/1000th, ISO 500

It’s a strong image Charles with three simple elements balanced well to give great contrast between them and showing the stark beauty of the environment.
My only consideration would be to try a 16:9 crop to give a bit more of a panorama feel.
On a second look, to me it seems that the giraffe’s legs and some of the body are a bit overexposed, possibly fixable in LightRoom.

2 Likes

The ground and sky make me think of Rothko’s color fields, or Dali’s surrealist landscapes where the ground is almost a uniform flat expanse. The giraffe is a quintessential big animal, but it feels dwarfed by the negative space. The image feels lonely, somehow threatening, maybe even ironically claustrophobic? But for me that doesn’t sit easily with the low saturation/neutral colors of the ground and, especially, the sky.

1 Like

Charles, the simplicity of this view (two fields of color and the giraffe) make it pleasntly minimalist and quietly inviting. I’m thinking that having the giraffe closer to the right edge would accentuate the isolation and the sense of wonder about where it’s heading.

2 Likes