About the Image(s)

We went to Tanzania in late August for the Great Migration and saw three herds cross the Mara River in two days. This is in the Masai Mara, which is the subject of many crossing pictures. If I have this right, the herd is crossing from Kenya into Tanzania. It’s not straight forward??”when we first got to the river, many animals from the first herd were at the water’s edge. And it took five hours before the first animal stepped into the river and then it turned into a stampede. We were lined up on the bank with 60 to 80 other safari vehicles stretched up and down the river waiting for this. We had left to see another herd, then came back and got the only open spot on the front line and the herd crossed in front of us??”rather just at a good angle for shooting. Since they are big animals and movement in the river is not that rapid, I settled for 1,000 sec and adjusted the aperature accordingly. I think I was probably shooting and changing different stops quickly to see what they looked like. After we got home, our photo club had a speaker who talked about using black and white when color was not an important part of the story and I decided that fit this shot. I ran it through Lightroom for basically cropping and I believe I turned down highlights a bit. Somehow, I did not end up with a lot of glare from water or wet fur. I then imported it with PhotoShop and then Photo AI for a low level use of the SuperFocus feature. After converting to black and white, it was a matter of playing with the color channels to see what I thought worked and shifting the cropping. I decided on leaving the animal in the lower right not tightly cropped so the viewer can see these animals are in water. Nikon 7-8 Nikon Z600mm f.63. VR. ISO 640 f/10 1000/sec. I thought the choice of lens was important I have a 180-600 telephoto and the 600 prime. Since most animals were at relatively equal distance from the camera, it was a good time to use the prime, which is a sharper lens. I could shoot all along the line of travel without the need to change focal length.