Young Leopardess

[Brendon Cremer]

We spent some great time with this young female by a small pan early one morning as she played, running up and down trees, jumping from branch to branch and wrestling with sticks and balls of Elephant Dung. The agility of these awesome animals never ceases to amaze me.Elephant Plains Game Lodge, Sabi Sand Game Reserve, South Africa

Used a soft flash at -2 EV to fill in light.




Camera NIKON D3S
Focal Length 360mm
Shutter Speed 1/640 sec
Aperture f/6.3
ISO 2800

[Satish Ranadive]

Excellent image of gorgeous lady. Wonderful lights.Love the angle of golden lights on her,beautiful colors and very nice composition.

Regards,
Satish.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Brendon - looks like nice light and a nice sighting. I like the branch and tree trunk framing the image. I would look at reducing the reds and perhaps to a lesser extent the magenta.

TFS,
Rachel

[Nancy Bell]

Great pose of the leopard and some nice rim lighting. I have only seen a leopard from a distance and your experience sounds awesome. In a perfect world I would have preferred not to have all those bright spots coming through.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Brendon,
i am fine with the overall image , nice flash work and comp.

like the sun illuminating the leopard from behind.

I would try to give the tree and the leopard a bit more contrast , meaning in levels pushing the whites to 250 without blowing them, there is gap in the histogram.
the tree looks a bit flat so a contrast mask will bring out some nice detail in the bark, i think.

Just my thoughts.

TFS Andreas

[Morkel Erasmus]

Love the feel and lighting in this, mate.
I agree with bumping contrast a tad - colours are fine for me. I'd look at sharpening the face a tad more as presented?

[Brendon Cremer]

Thanks very much all for your great comments and advice, much appreciated.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Brendon, a very nice image of a gorgeous animal. Early mornings, late evenings are the best time to shoot, offering some exquisite light and I really like the warm, the slight ring around the subject and the dappled light coming through the canopy. Now I'm working on the laptop so the observations/comments /feedback may not be as accurate as perhaps they could be, however...

I agree with Morkel that the subject could stand some further sharpening, but there could also be slight movement in the subject perhaps too, based on the paws? I might slightly tone down slightly the highlights running along the top trim edge to give a 'cleaner' finish, just personal preference. Perhaps adding a Graduate filter, not a Gradient to the bottom third, RHS and part of the top just to bring down the exposure, highlights, shadows to basically darken and lift the Leopard. Then to apply a small amount of mid tone and a % Luminosity layer. I would have perhaps gone to ISO3200 just for a bit more SS and dropped to f5.6.

Not sure if the attached helps, but expands on my rational above.

TFS
Steve

PS Brendon you are aware you can go to 1200 wide now and 900 high, plus increase the KB size?

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Brendon, Love the image. Finding leopard active in the early morning or late evening hours is not easy, and you got this lady with good light. The back lighting made it difficult, but I think you handled it well here. Love to see a RP based upon Steve's suggestion if that is possible. Loi