Large male cheetah in golden light

[Mark Needham]

Hi Everyone! :wave:

Image:

Large male cheetah in golden light.
Little Kwara Camp, Okavango Delta, Botswana.
July 2013.

I had less than 5 seconds to get this image, as the cheetah was on the move with his two brothers all morning. For a brief few seconds, he anxiously laid down in the grass on a mound and quickly turned his head to scan the plains before he was up and on the move again.

This is a full frame image and unfortunately I did not have time to switch to my camera with the 70-200 lens before he moved. The nose is a tiny bit soft due to the 500 lens shallow dof and by the time I managed to stop down beyond f4.5, he turned his head away, got up, and moved. I wish we also had time to move the safari truck back a bit so I had some more canvas to work with, especially along the bottom (I had to keep reminding the ranger that I am shooting with a 500mm prime lens). Despite these caveats, I like the catch light in the eye and the amber eyes showing (in many images of cheetahs the eyes are dark unless the light angle is just right), his posture, soft green grasses in the foreground, and the pale yellow / golden glow of the background fields, which is why I worked it up in processing. A tiny amount of fill flash was used to reduce shadows and get a catch light in his eye (flash was already mounted and powered up on a wimberly flash bracket from earlier in the morning).


Equipment:

Canon 5D Mark III camera.
Canon 500 f4 Mark II lens.
f4.5, 1/800, ISO 400.
manual mode, evaluative metering.
spot focus between nose and eye.
tiny amount of fill flash.
Jobu Jr. gimbal on Manfrotto superclamp attached to safari vehicle.

Post processing:

Lightroom 5.6: basic global adjustments.
Photoshop CS6 and Nik Viveza: targeted adjustments.
Nik Color Efex: white neutralizer, tonal contrast.
Photoshop CS6: selective color enhancement, resized and sharpened using Hougaard Malan’s awesome actions.
edited on a color calibrated NEC P241W monitor.

Note that the small compressed .jpg here on the web looks a tad darker than the full size on my screen.
As always, comments and critique welcomed! Cheers :cheers:

[Russell Johnson]

Personally Mark, this image is not working for me due to the highlights in the background that I find quite distracting.

Have you considered double process the image using luminosity masks to tame those highlights?

[Mark Needham]

Personally Mark, this image is not working for me due to the highlights in the background that I find quite distracting.

Have you considered double process the image using luminosity masks to tame those highlights?

Hi Russell -- Are you talking about the entire background or just the brightest parts? -- Cheers, Mark.

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Mark, lovely sighting and sharpness in good light. Not sure why you need a flash as there was plenty of light evidenced by the bright, over-exposed BG. Was the Cheetah in the shade? Also, you could have shot at ISO-800 or even 1600 with your kit and stopped down the aperture.

Here is a quick RP

Reduced exposure by -0.32EV
Set white at 250 in Levels
Applied luminosity mask to darken the BG, 42%
Used Curves to brighten the eyes a little
Increased contrast to the subject only

WDYT?

Loi

[Marc Mol]

Hi Mark

The problem here starts from your title "IN golden light", the cheetah is clearly in the shade and not in that lovely golden light you state.
What time of the day was this? You do have a fine pose with good techs, but it needed to be in that light and not the FG.
Some good suggestions by Russel to do a lumo mask on the bright yellow BG with Loi RP an improvement also, I'm wondering if you have lightened the eyes a little as well?

Keep 'em coming :w3

TFS

[Mark Needham]

Russell - agree that the BG is a bit overexposed now that I look at it closer. I tried a darker BG when initially working this up in post, but then the tones were similar to the cheetah and the subject started getting "lost" in the BG, if that makes any sense. Regardless, I will try to tone that down using a LM using Loi's RP as a guide.

Loi - yes, needed a bit of fill flash because of slight shadows on the neck and face created by the termite mound to the left of the cheetah. Agree that I could have pushed the ISO to stop down, but like I said in the OP, I had less than 5 seconds to get the shot. Once I did stop down and had the right settings, the cheetah turns his head, got up, and moved on. Thanks for the stab at the RP - the BG is better, but the subject seems to be a tad dark. However, it will help when I work up a revised version, so thanks so much!

Marc - yes, the cheetah was in partial shade, which is why I used fill flash. Apologies for the error in the title. Eyes were lightened by flash and I did not lighten them in post, although Loi's report lightened them a bit. Time of day was 5:30pm, so I should have said "earlier in the afternoon" in my OP.
Thanks everyone! Will work up a revised version and post as soon as possible. :cheers:

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Mark - Good observations and suggestions above. On your rp I would go for closer to your cheetah but Loi's bg.

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Mark, I like the concept, but like the others it's not really working as such.

For me you need more image content below, there is no real room for the virtual legs/body. Secondly there is not much tonal variation within the image and based on your description of the location/shooting conditions I would expect more, it all seems to have a constant/even light here. The face, in particular the black & eyes look as if they have been opened up and again, lacking that tonal depth & richness. With the 5D you could have easily ramped up the ISO to gain some more DoF without any issue to IQ. I would also reduce the blue creeping in and perhaps (personal pref) back off on the sharpening a wee bit. I think Mark this is where pulling back a bit with the vehicle and sooting with some more room all round and then marginally cropping for composition would have helped.

I think Morkel has mentioned about the use of multiple watermarks.

Looking forward to more.

TFS
Steve

[Morkel Erasmus]

Late to this one, bud. I concur with most of the critique given here.
I think in lighting situations like this a monochrome is a feasible alternative as it allows you to "Sculpt" the light disparity via colour filters.
What do you think of this one? VERY quick job :e3

[Mark Needham]

Thanks, Morkel. I hadn't thought about a mono conversion for this image, and truth be told I was ready to toss the image and move on to another better one (e.g., my recent bear images from Alaska, or my Mara images from my trip there with you). But, your mono has me re-thinking possibilities for the image. Hmmmmm... what to do... :eek3:

[Arthur Morris]

I have no problem with the OP. Subject in shade/BKGD in sun has always worked for me. Welcome Mr. Mark.