I wish you could've smelled him

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AratiRao
I wish you could've smelled him
I wish you could have smelled him.

This male in musth. He sprayed and splashed, rubbed and thrashed with gravitas. And then. And then, he walked out towards us. Barely 4 feet from our jeep, he walked gravely, eyes lowered, head held high - walked around our jeep four times. a show of intimidation, i was told. And that smell of secretion from his temporal glands pervaded us, our clothes, and hung heavily in the air - long after he walked away.

i waited on posting this image, mulling over a few different crops and bw/burnished/color and finally this one worked best for me ~ to show the energy in his body movement and the patterns echoing in the water and his skin. I've been working with elephant images the last few days (i realized i have so many from 2011, it was an elephantine year for me) and have come to love the patterns in an elephant's skin - which looks even better when wet. This image has some of that too... another reason i liked it.

Ben, A huge tuskless male in musth | Kaudulla | Sri Lanka 2011
Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:29 am
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~ Arati Rao ~
http://www.aratirao.com


AratiRao  Joined CNP On 08 Sep 2011    Total Image posts 118    -   Total Image Comments 504    -   Image Post to Comment Ratio 1:4    -   Image Comment Density 80     -     Total Forum Posts 86

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Comments

Commentby nirlep on Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:11 pm

Hi Arati,
Nice playful mood here. The composition is too tight for my taste buds. I'm looking for space around the elephant. In absence of space I was looking at a form I told myself. The form takes shape in the left half of the frame stretching at the most till the middle of hind thigh. The remaining part may be cropped to highlight form.
Thanks for sharing

Commentby AratiRao on Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:09 pm

HI nirlep,
thanks, very nice that you have made this comment. i struggled with the crops for so long.
have posted the looser crop in the illustration forum here. For some reason, i think i wanted to keep focus on the forms, i chose the closer one - but as you indicate, maybe i should go even closer to achieve that...

thanks once again,
A

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~ Arati Rao ~
http://www.aratirao.com

Commentby Nilanjan Das on Mon Jan 30, 2012 11:24 pm

I would want you you to crop even from the top, losing the eye will perhaps make this even more interesting. I think this image is a perfect candidate for the tightest crop possible. Space will kill this image...

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Nilanjan Das Photography

Commentby Radha on Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:31 pm

Arati .. This image has been on my mind from the time I saw it, it haunts me.. But, I like the B&W better :)

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Radha Rangarajan
My Blog ~ Flickr

Commentby AratiRao on Tue Jan 31, 2012 5:57 pm

Thanks radha! after a lot of mulling, i gravitated towards the color :)
As nilanjanda points out, a tighter crop would do more justice to this big guy's antics.

thanks again,
A

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~ Arati Rao ~
http://www.aratirao.com