Leopard Portrait

[Rachel Hollander]

Another portrait of the Vomba Young Male Leopard. Taken in Londolozi at the end of May 2014. The Leopard's status on the IUCN Red List is "Near Threatened." Unfortunately, its population is declining. I understand that this particular leopard, who had been a particularly cooperative subject with whom we spent hours, disappeared from Londolozi a few months after we saw him. To my knowledge, they never learned his fate.

Canon 5D3
300 II plus 2x III
1/1000
f6.3
ISO 800
Beanbag from safari vehicle, cropped to 8x10 by cropping from top only, levels, curves, selective color adjustments, sharpened in CCPS.

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

A very nice portrait Rachel. I like the tight framing, the angled head and that gash on the nose add interest. PP is top notch and the techs are sound as usual. Very nice colours too. TFS.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Rachel a very nice tight portrait of this Leopard , sad to hear he disappeared .
Nice colors and overall well balanced tones , but from my personal view i might try to dodge the 3/4 tones and burn the HL a bit and see how it does look .
Lovely details and good sharpness.
With hindsight it would have been better to shoot with F8 or even F9 cause sharpness is fading away too quickly , at least the right eye would have been in the focal plane for perfection :wave:, but in the heat of the moment .....
You could have done this easily as there was plenty more ISO available with the 5D3.

TFS Andreas

[Nancy Bell]

A beautiful portrait! Andreas has some good points about dodging & burning. I like the combination of the OOF tan stems in the bkgd and the one in front of the ear; they add framing.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Rachel -- I kind of liked everything about the image ! beautiful colors , lovely details , nice and sharp , f 8 or f 9 would definitely been a good choice but this is also working fine. . TFS !

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Rachel, lovely angled pose, and I do like the detail you have brought out on the head - love the small 'wound' on the nose. Colours look spot on, and whats a leopard image without a piece of foliage intersecting some part of the head. :w3

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks everyone. I agree I could have stopped down a bit more. I'll take a look at the highlights and 3/4 tones.

Thanks again,
Rachel