Baby Dolphin

Here is a recent shot that I took with my Oly and the Wide Angle Lens. This was a fairly difficult shot to get and I worked quite a while to get it. Baby dolphins are often very playful and exciteable and ACTIVE, so getting one centered for a shot is damn near impossible. But this playful little squeaker posed very nicely for me.

Too cool! Where'd you get the shot?

Cheers

James

Bahamas. I was on a liveaboard with a Japanese group that books up one of the boats for a month or two. An awesome week of dolphins. Wish I had seen more sharks and dove the Sugar wreck, but alas, that was not in the works...

Funny thing is I saw the Shear Water while I was out there several times. I'm thinkin about entering this shot in a photo comp or two...

It's hard to tell that it's a baby dolphin though because there is nothing in the shot to show the scale.

I still like it though.

Cheers

James

True...there is nothing to give it scale. It is not so hard to recognize as juvenile because of its shape. It's a little bit...how should I say...short/scrunched? Also, this is an Atlantic Spotted Dolphin and they don't show spots until about 3-4 years of age. But honestly, when they are young like this, I can't tell a whole lot of difference between the Atlantic Spotteds and the Hawaiian Spinners. They all have that short, scrunched look(pardon the lack of good adjectives).

--John

That is too cute! I love the soft look it has. Did you do something to soften it? Gives it a nice "baby" quality.

Sandy

Nope. Believe it or not. This is an un-retouched image. I just lucked out for the most part(plus a lot of work in the water). Until VERY recently, I never Photoshopped images. I have no retouches of anything I have ever done(over 15K images). But recently when I decided to print some images, I started to realize that my printed images were different from the screen image. A lot of the results were horrifying. So I talked to a knowledgeable person at the place I do my printing(we don't develop now, do we) and she told me where to go to get the extensions for Adobe so that I could view what it would look like on their printers. Since then I have delved into the color modification and whatnot for printing, but never keep the modd'ed files, just the originals. I write down the printing changes I make just so I don't have to mess with it in the future. I'm not badmouthing Adobe fans at all...it's just that I have always taken u/w pictures for myself and friends/family and never really thought about prettying up what I took. For pro work and website I can fully see editing images. Most of what I post is un-retouched. As for the softness, it's all in the baby.

It's a cute shot. I reconised it as a young'un and I have only ever seen them on TV!

What did strike me was the unusual colour tone to the picture, to me it looked unnatural so I viewed and adjusted it in PS, just tweaked the levels and it looked even better. If you have PS7 just run Image> adjustments> Auto levels ,this makes the baby "pop". It is better to adjust the individual levels in a seperate layer but the "auto" just gives you an idea.

Dreamy shot though, maybe baby could have some long eye lashes too?

PauP

envy! B) Indeed a very nice and soft picture...