face to face

[niranjan sant]

it was thrilling experience to come face to face with most powerful cat in the world. we were taking our early mornning ride in forest,and about 6 am in the chilly mornning we saw some movement in the grass on the side of the road. we stopped the vehical to take a look and in a flash this animal came on the road. it was really close,this is almost full frame image with 300mm tele.
canon 1dmark2
canon 300/2.8 @ 2.8
1/200 @ iso 800

[Ken Watkins]

Beautiful image, enhanced by the fact that the natural colours have not been "fiddled" with.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Niranjan, the pose( becos of the crossed legs) and the DOF are really really good here. Awesome expression too. I think a little room around will help. Small adjustments in PP will help a lot too. A little boost in color sat and contrast will certainly make it pop.

Thx for sharing the story.

[peter delaney]

Great image .. he looks bewildered!! with a bit of TLC especially some contrast this image will pop nicely

[David Thomasson]

I think the posted image has a color cast, so I "fiddled" :p with the colors by setting white and black points.

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/4999/castfix.jpg

[Harshad Barve]

Excellent image and David's repost take this over the top
TFS

[niranjan sant]

hi,ken,the repost looks good. but it was very early mornning and the colours in my post are quite close to what i saw that day.
at the same time,the compo is also not ideal,would have loved it dead in the centre,but he came so close to the jeep,and that to so suddenly,that i had to shoot few snaps and reverse back the vehical. or else there was a chance that he would have come on to the bonnet of the jeep.you can see from his expression,he was quite annoyed,startled and read to take on.

[David Thomasson]

the repost looks good. but it was very early mornning and the colours in my post are quite close to what i saw that day.

It's fine to leave the color cast, but here's one point to bear in mind: Nothing in the image tells viewers that this was taken
at dawn -- cues such as maybe a glimpse of still-dark sky with first light showing at the horizon, maybe a sliver of
moon. Such cues tell us the color cast is natural. The brain similarly adjusts to an orange cast when we see familiar signs
of sunset, so that we "instinctively" know a bride's orange dress is really white.

But without those cues, as in this image, it's just a blue-green color cast. My first impression was that the white balance
was very noticeably off. Ken, on the other hand, has probably been in those conditions many times. His experiences gave
him cues to what he was seeing, so the colors looked natural to him.

[Ken Watkins]

It's fine to leave the color cast, but here's one point to bear in mind: Nothing in the image tells viewers that this was taken
at dawn -- cues such as maybe a glimpse of still-dark sky with first light showing at the horizon, maybe a sliver of
moon. Such cues tell us the color cast is natural. The brain similarly adjusts to an orange cast when we see familiar signs
of sunset, so that we "instinctively" know a bride's orange dress is really white.

But without those cues, as in this image, it's just a blue-green color cast. My first impression was that the white balance
was very noticeably off. Ken, on the other hand, has probably been in those conditions many times. His experiences gave
him cues to what he was seeing, so the colors looked natural to him.

David,

You make an interesting point but I question how on earthyou can convey the lighting conditions that were there at the time the image was taken other than leaving them as near as possible to nature. To my mind we see far too many images designed to pop rather than reflect what nature looks like ( I am guilty of this!), I have said this before and I will say it again in real life Tigers are not orange.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Ken, I agree to what you are saying. Tigers are not orange. correct. And I also dont mind natural color casts.

For this image, I like the contrast and exposure in David's repost. Color wise, something in between the two would be my personal preference. Accurate or not, only Niranjan can say.

Niranjan, in such lighting conditions, I have realised that none of the standard canon white-balances work very well. If this were mine, during RAW conversion, I'd have selected white balance as color temp (rather than shade or cloudy or auto) and played with the slider to get the most natural looking colors. Which picture style have you used? Is it neutral? I use Faithful. You can try that.

As David has suggested, you can also use 'click' white balance. But its tricky....you will have to try clicking on different white spots to get what you find accurate.

[David Fletcher]

Lovely intent look on this. Well done. Kaustubh has a very good point re WB and worth taking on board.

[David Thomasson]

David,

You make an interesting point but I question how on earthyou can convey the lighting conditions that were there at the time the image was taken other than leaving them as near as possible to nature. To my mind we see far too many images designed to pop rather than reflect what nature looks like ( I am guilty of this!), I have said this before and I will say it again in real life Tigers are not orange.

Well, we get into a couple of different kinds of question here.

One is the subjectivity of what we see. Our perception of "what nature (or anything else) really looks like" is more subjective than most of us might suppose. If you took ten trained painters (as in canvas and oil) and asked them all to paint a particular scene "just the way it was," you'd get ten different renditions, try though they might to convey it "as it was." Or, as an alternative experiment, if you photographed a scene and produced several versions (different color adjustments) and then asked ten people who had observed it to pick the photo that best captures the scene "as it really was," you'd get some disagreement on that. Different people would remember the scene different ways. It's a peculiarity of perception. So that's one issue.

Another is more of a philosophical or value question: the extent to which a photographer should strive to convey nature "as it really was." Assuming that we could overcome the subjectivity problem and do that at will, there's a reasonable difference of opinion, on aesthetic grounds, about the desirability of doing it. It's not just a two-sided issue, it's a many sided issue. You place yourself on the realistic side of that spectrum when you say, "we see far too many images designed to pop rather than reflect what nature looks like." I surely live somewhere on the other side -- favoring not so much "pop" as a pleasing image over an accurate representation. What pleases, of course, is a question of value, and humans have been debating value questions ever since they learned to talk. And you know what? We still haven't settled those questions. :confused: I don't think we ever will.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Niranjan,

I like the head on pose. Love the curious looks. Where exactly was this?

From the colours, one can safely assume that it was shot in low light. David's version is good and gives an impression of being photographed later in the day. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Niranjan,

I like the head on pose. Love the curious looks. Where exactly was this?

From the colours, one can safely assume that it was shot in low light. David's version is good and gives an impression of being photographed later in the day. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi