Unbearable

[Diane_Miller]

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

This is an oldie but goldie, from 2006. I thought I had submitted it before but can’t find it. I shot the bear at the San Francisco Zoo. I only had a 500mm lens, for portraits, as the BGs there are awful. But when I went by the polar bear enclosure I nearly passed out when I saw this guy chilling out. Had to set up the tripod quickly and rotate the camera vertical and shoot a quick pano – I was in a panic that he would move before I had it. And I had to get far enough back that it was possible someone would walk in front of me. But I got in two sweeps of the pano before he casually got up and wandered off. The light was foggy and I was thinking about a good background – maybe the nearby beach – but a few days later we made a run to our favorite dry lake bed and for about the only time before or since there were some clouds. As soon as we parked a cloud shadow came along and the prefect cloud appeared! I broke fingernails jumping out of the plane and grabbing the camera. I couldn’t wait to get home to assemble it.

Specific Feedback

All comments welcome!

Technical Details

The BG:

The bear:

Some layer work in PS to assemble and resize the bear, drop it in and blend it.

[Chris_Baird]

How clever and creative of you! It couldn’t be better. It sure is a show stopper in my opinion. The bear is just too cute!

[Larry_Greenbaum]

Diane, You come up with some real unique winners. That’s a bear with an itch and a pompous personality, “See me,'” it might be saying in polar bear language. The background certainly does not look like a zoo. Is this a composite? It looks like a desert background. How did you do this? Wonderful whimsical image.

[Dennis_Plank]

This is awesome, Diane. Great vision and execution. If you wanted to with modern tools, there’s a thin lighter area under the bear’s left wrist that doesn’t fit and would be an easy fix these days, but that is nitpicking of the nth degree for such a wonderful image.

[Diane_Miller]

Thanks, @Larry_Greenbaum and @Dennis_Plank. Larry, definitely a composite – the bear wouldn’t fit in the plane. (That’s our favorite dry lake. Nobody else is ever there.) Dennis, that does look odd but it’s fur flattened out against the ground. It bugs me that the shadow is so sharply-defined, too, but that’s the way it was. I could soften it.

Here’s one of the raw files.

[Dennis_Plank]

Interesting phenomenon, Diane. The shadow didn’t bother me at all.