Gabriela Plesea
03-05-2015, 02:13 PM
Hello Friends,
I am sharing this image for two reasons - one being, this was an interesting sighting we had last month. I am also asking whether you think I can improve this or should I dump it. Be blunt if you have to, I guess I should have given up on it, it does not show the entire scene and needs a lengthy story for you to understand what was going on. I usually choose better frames to work on, try to compose while shooting so not much cropping during processing, and generally do not to share something shot in poor lighting conditions. But this was quite a special sighting and I only managed two frames, I kept this one for memory sake.
We normally stay on the Botswana side of the Kalahari but sometimes include Mata Mata which is known for its cheetah sightings- a long way to travel from Polentswa, so we spent a night at Nossob camp on the way. That afternoon we took a drive South and came upon what we assumed to be a pride of...fourteen lions. What was interesting was, we could not see any adults at all. What we found was two clumps of subadult lions bundled together in the shade of two large trees and not an adult in sight - so unusual. As we sat and watched them (it was still very hot even though it was about 6:30 pm), from time to time a youngster would get up and walk about, we then realised they were so thin and weak they could hardly move. A few were stronger and fitter than others, my image here shows one of them. What grabbed me most was they all seemed to stare in the same direction, and I assumed this was where the parents were expected to arrive from. These little chaps (from about six to nine months old) were left on their own for almost a week, judging by their condition.
There's a longing on the face of this young lion and I tried to capture that, the dappled light helped with the dramatic aspect to some extent. Some of his siblings were lying in front of him so I had to do a heavy crop to avoid the presence of a few little paws there. The subject is too much in the centre IMO, should I crop a tad more from the bottom of RHS the IQ would suffer too much (I already lost enough). Temperature at the time was 39"C, light rather harsh and some deep shadows to contend with. I took a lot of video shots and only before we departed I captured this for my records. I did my best to lift some of the shadows, brought the HL down a tad, cloned out a few thin blades of grass on the RHS. Brightened up the scene a bit and sharpened to taste, the crop is a tad more than the image could handle- keep or dump?
Nikon D4
Nikon 500mm F4
1/1000s
F6.3
ISO 640
Gimpro support ( Andre calls it the "monstrosity" because of its size and the sheer number of knobs)
Thank you for viewing and for your patience to read my lenghty story,
Warmest regards,
I am sharing this image for two reasons - one being, this was an interesting sighting we had last month. I am also asking whether you think I can improve this or should I dump it. Be blunt if you have to, I guess I should have given up on it, it does not show the entire scene and needs a lengthy story for you to understand what was going on. I usually choose better frames to work on, try to compose while shooting so not much cropping during processing, and generally do not to share something shot in poor lighting conditions. But this was quite a special sighting and I only managed two frames, I kept this one for memory sake.
We normally stay on the Botswana side of the Kalahari but sometimes include Mata Mata which is known for its cheetah sightings- a long way to travel from Polentswa, so we spent a night at Nossob camp on the way. That afternoon we took a drive South and came upon what we assumed to be a pride of...fourteen lions. What was interesting was, we could not see any adults at all. What we found was two clumps of subadult lions bundled together in the shade of two large trees and not an adult in sight - so unusual. As we sat and watched them (it was still very hot even though it was about 6:30 pm), from time to time a youngster would get up and walk about, we then realised they were so thin and weak they could hardly move. A few were stronger and fitter than others, my image here shows one of them. What grabbed me most was they all seemed to stare in the same direction, and I assumed this was where the parents were expected to arrive from. These little chaps (from about six to nine months old) were left on their own for almost a week, judging by their condition.
There's a longing on the face of this young lion and I tried to capture that, the dappled light helped with the dramatic aspect to some extent. Some of his siblings were lying in front of him so I had to do a heavy crop to avoid the presence of a few little paws there. The subject is too much in the centre IMO, should I crop a tad more from the bottom of RHS the IQ would suffer too much (I already lost enough). Temperature at the time was 39"C, light rather harsh and some deep shadows to contend with. I took a lot of video shots and only before we departed I captured this for my records. I did my best to lift some of the shadows, brought the HL down a tad, cloned out a few thin blades of grass on the RHS. Brightened up the scene a bit and sharpened to taste, the crop is a tad more than the image could handle- keep or dump?
Nikon D4
Nikon 500mm F4
1/1000s
F6.3
ISO 640
Gimpro support ( Andre calls it the "monstrosity" because of its size and the sheer number of knobs)
Thank you for viewing and for your patience to read my lenghty story,
Warmest regards,