Triptyching the Light Fantastic

Okay, one more little timeout from the exploration of the Olympus OM-D E-M10...

I had to "work" yesterday, which for me consists of riding a golf cart around a beautiful golf course, interacting with the (mostly) happy golfers and admiring the views. Since this particular golf course (Serenoa Golf and Country Club) literally has water on every hole, there is a vast variety of wildlife, from gators to ospreys, eagles, herons, egrets, ibis and the occasional white pelican.

I fixed up my lunch "cooler" into a nice little camera storage container so I always have a camera near by. Yesterday there was a good sized alligator sunning itself on the left side of number 12. Since it was a fairly light day customer wise, and no one was coming up the fairway, I stopped and grabbed a few shots even though I currently only have a 12-50mm (24-100mm 35mm equivalent) lens (75-300mm/150-600mm should be here today - yay!).

I was able to get within about 10 feet before I saw some sign of movement. I quickly set my shutter release options to Sequential L (low speed, 3.5 frames per second) in hopes I could get a series of Mr. Al E. Gator either going into the pond, or coming after the crazy guy with the funny black box in his hands. In a twinkling he (or she) was gone and I was left with nothing but this...

Now, believe it or don't, but gator shots are pretty much a dime a dozen (or, less) in Florida, so I started thinking about how to make this shot something special.

My first thought was a close cropping, thus ---

Still much to common an image for Florida, although you can now easily see those chompers that rest outside of his mouth, and see how knobby his skin is.

My next thought was --- BLACK & WHITE. Oh, yeah. Better, but still left me wanting. Somehow I wanted the whole body in the image in order to convey all aspects of being a gator. Before long I thought of trying a triptych, and now that you see where we are going, we'll explore that subject in the next post...