Lions Yawn

[Brendon Cremer]

A young sub adult male lying on the side of a grassy termite mound, yawns after waking from an afternoon nap to find most of the pride already moving on deeper into the plains in search of the buffalo herd as the sun lowers on another great day in the Okavango Delta.

Duba Plains, Okavango Delta, Botswana




Camera NIKON D3S
Focal Length 600mm
Shutter Speed 1/800 sec
Aperture f/5.6
ISO 1600

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Brendon - a very different type of lion image than you usually post. I like the yawn and the peeking up from behind the little hill. A little too much negative space for me and I find the nearer, brighter oof foliage on the rhs drawing the eye a bit. I cropped to remove that foliage but keeping the same proportions and rule of thirds placement that you had of the lion. I also reduced the yellows by -10 as I found them a bit too strong (personal taste, of course) and finally added another round of USM selectively to the lion. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel

P.S. sorry about the watermark.

[Brendon Cremer]

I like Rachel, very nice, thanks very much for your time and RP

[Steve Canuel]

A different shot with a great view. I also like the bright colors.

[hirandesilva]

Like the detail visible in the Lion and the creativeness of this image. Agree with Rachel's RP where there is more attention to the subject.

Hiran

[Morkel Erasmus]

Lovely image Brendon. I like the negative space and would only crop a sliver off the RHS in your OP to get rid of the brownish OOF tree next to the green one.
Great light.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Brendon, I like the lowish POV and position within frame, plus the way the head & BKG bushes link. Good choice on DOF and the BKG gives nice separation. I do agree however that the colours overall do look very saturated. personally I would adjust the HSL sliders, add some mid tone and a slight mid tone Curves adjustment via a channel selection. Combining two images and retaining the OP detain & clarity of the mouth I think maybe the direction as it tends to soften, yet bring out a bit more depth.

Would welcome your thoughts on this brandon.

TFS
Steve