Wikipedia:Picture peer review/Female White-Cheeked Gibbon

Female White-Cheeked Gibbon

I'd like to see where this one sits - I'm just starting to give animal photography a go. The photo shows the female gibbon, which is quite different in appearance from the male, is quite sharp and at a high resolution. I'm pretty happy with the exposure given the range in the shot and the light colouring of her fur.

Articles this image appears in: Northern White-cheeked Gibbon

Creator: Bilby

Suggested by: Bilby (talk) 10:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Looked at this last week but didn't get around to commenting. Anyway, it looks pretty good to me, couldn't remember any real quality issues. Some things I would suggest that may come up if you nominated at FPC. It looks maybe a little underexposed in the main, though looks to be quite tough lighting conditions as the upper parts of the arms are very bright, perhaps even blown - you've mentioned this too, and overall you've done it quite well. The cutoff left arm would unfortunately work against it, would have been great to get right out to the hand, but as is it looks a bit awkward. The other negative is that it's a pretty strong profile shot - we don't expect animals to be posing for the photo, but it's usually nice if they're looking in the general direction of the camera. Thanks for your nomination. --jjron (talk) 06:31, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll see if any of the other shots are a tad closer. The hassle was the light colouring against a necessarily dark background - if you increase exposure (everything was auto-bracketed half a stop and in raw, so I could give this a shot) the right arm tended to get blown highlights. But I may have a couple of alts that will help - as per normal with animals, I took a lot of shots. :) And thanks for the comment - I'm hoping to learn to do more than offer architecture to Wikipedia one day. - Bilby (talk) 08:12, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just what we need - another Aussie contributing high quality animal images for Wikipedia and FPC ;-). Seriously though, it's great to get more people that can contribute high quality original work here. Drop by with anything good you've got, and if any of the architecture stuff is particularly good, don't be shy about that either. There's a whole FP category for architecture. --jjron (talk) 11:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added edit with a few tweaks. --jjron (talk) 13:38, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I like your edit - makes it pop better. :) I've been looking at the other shots, and the problem is that when she looks straight into the camera you loose the black strip on the head - which is a key identifying characteristic of the species. It is still sort of there, but not quite as plain. I need a shot from slightly above to have a full face portrait with the patch, or have her looking down just a tad. - Bilby (talk) 01:18, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, can be hard to get it all. Any shots with the full animal at least (no cutoff arms, etc) that are up to this one? --jjron (talk) 12:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

None that I prefer - the 200mm shots had trouble getting everything in, so one arm or the other looses a bit, and the 50mm shots, while at sufficient resolution to be cropped, show the composition problems from her pose. (Her arms are impressively long, so you get this big expanse of nothing with a body in the bottom third). I went back today to see if I could make a second go at it, but I made the mistake of bringing my wife, who didn't understand why I wanted to spend two hours at the gibbons waiting for the right shot. :) I did find a nice flower, though, as per above, and I'll make another try when I can sneak off on my own. - Bilby (talk) 06:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seconder