Leopard

[Ken Watkins]

Taken in Kwando concession Botswana

EOS 1D MkIII
500m F4 IS
at F8, 1/200, ISO 500 +2/3rds adjustment, hand held

[Vincent Grafhorst]

Neat image Ken. Like that intense stare.

[Cindy Cone]

Beautiful image of this fine leopard, Ken. I like the composition and point of view. I only find the highlights in the background a little distracting.

[Ken Watkins]

Hi Cindy,

Now you have pointed it out I see what you mean. Unfortunately I have no skill at Photoshop and would have no idea how to change this.

[Vincent Grafhorst]

Ken for example you could make a levels or curves adjustment layer, darken the image and than apply layer masks on the areas you do not want to be darkened. Another option than can work here is to create a selective color adjustment layer and add black to the whites, blues and cyans. Selective shadow/highlight adjustments can also work here, or a combination of the above.

[Robert Amoruso]

Vincent did good with the suggested corrections for the BG. Composition is good and you did well with a cluttered environment. I would have preferred a bit more room right and bottom to get the right paw in. Nice work Ken.

[Van Hilliard]

I think all of the above points on background, bright areas and space below the paw are good. Still, I love the image and the intense stare. The exposure on the animal itself is perfect.

[Peter Buntman]

Outstanding sighting and you got so close in Kwando, Image is so sharp and great colours, nit covered from the distace 500 im sure you couldnt use a flash but I find flash helps with the hot BG areas. Still well done great looking leopard

[Dave Phillips]

Ken, awesome image, but is presented in Adobe RGB colorspace.
That means most of us see a somewhat muted color.
Convert to sRGB for web and the color/pop come back......many miss this conversion step

here's a little play with you beautiful cat...changed white bal a wee bit and used contrast enhancement(USM @ 6/25/0) and did a bit selective sharpening....lightened eyes a bit

[Ken Watkins]

There are so many things I need to learn, like how to convert the colorspace. How is this done?

[Howard Burkert]

Ken, I like your image alot!! And agree with the comments that have been made. As for the color space ... In photoshop go to Image> Mode and click on the color space in the fly out menu.
Best.
Howard.

[Dave Phillips]

Ken, I like your image alot!! And agree with the comments that have been made. As for the color space ... In photoshop go to Image> Mode and click on the color space in the fly out menu.
Best.
Howard.

actually in photoshop you will go to edit/convert to profile/sRGB.....in profile you will likely already be RGB. No reason to change this unless doing pre-press work. But you want to select 8 bit while there