Wisent I Bison bonasus

A shot taken during a winter visit to ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in southern England. There had been some snowfall a day or two prior to my visit. The elevated position of the park meant that the snow was still plentiful on the ground when I arrived, and there was a very dense fog.

Consequently, it was quite easy to get a clean background — at other times of the year I’m often looking around for alternative viewpoints, trying to minimise the impact of an ugly tree / fence / hedge / building which is intruding into the background of a shot. With snow and fog combined, there was much more freedom to compose the subject, with a plain or near-plain background available at almost all shooting angles.

With this shot of one of the small herd of European bison (wisent), I was able to shoot from a near standing position; keeping the subject to the right, a wide lens meant that, even though I was close to the subject, I could also include a portion of the snow-covered paddock.

I chose to exclude the main identifying features (the horns) on this particular shot, concentrating on the eye and beard.

image edit

I’d framed the shot in-camera in portrait format:

Wisent I (prior to edit)

Initial edits included correcting the underexposure and boosting the shadow detail, as well as adding Vibrance and some Clarity in Lightroom to lift the subject out of the thick fog. The whites were brightened in order to bleach out the background completely, giving an almost “studio” feel to the shot.

Feeling that the original shot was somewhat ‘cramped’, I then opened it in Photoshop, checked that the whites were indeed pure white, and then added a chunk of additional plain white background to the left of the subject, making it look as if the bison was peering in from the edge of the frame.