Attitude...

[Morkel Erasmus]

...that belies their size...

Taken in the Sabi-Sands Game Reserve while on safari at Leopard Hills. Conditions were overcast and the lions were relaxing in a sandy riverbed below our position.

Techs:
Nikon D3s with Nikkor 200-400mm f4 VR @ 250mm
f4.0 @ 1/640 SS @ ISO-1250

[Ajit Huilgol]

Yes, lion cubs do have a lot of attitude. I watched a scene in the Ndutu area of Serengeti last May where four cubs, about 3 months old, stalking a giant of a bull elephant, named DT (Destroyer of Trees), who must have been over 11 feet tall and weighed about 6 tonnes! About your image, imo, the bg is too bright and the cub is almost lost in it. Maybe, selectively darkening the bg might bring out the cub more.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Morkel,
Theyare definitely more fun to watch than the sleeping one!!! .....always getting into trouble! Would be interesting to see the BG darker for comparison. Very nice details throughout.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks for the comments Ajit & Roman...

something like this (did a quick job here)?

[Roman Kurywczak]

Works for me Morkel! Glad to see you didn;t go to far....like me!

[Harshad Barve]

You gotta love them Morkelbhai , lovely pose and repost looks better to my eyes
TFS

[Tom Graham]

Come on Morkel, you're just teasing us, you've got better than this of the cub(s).
Tom
ps - would expect the sand to be "warmer", whole image a bit blue?

[Steve Canuel]

Looks like someone wants to play. Nice eye contact and the tongue sticking out looks good. Both versions look okay to me, color looks good to me for conditions you describe.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks for the feedback guys. got a lot more of them but I just loved the attitude and DOF here.

[Tom Graham]

By DOF you mean how only its head is sharp?
Ok, but not sure I agree with you on that. My preference would be to see more of cub sharp. Probably why my "standard" f stop is f8 :)
And BTW, you don't agree image is a little cool, the sand should have a beige/brown tone to it? (Which of course would also warm up the cub).
Tom

[Morkel Erasmus]

Tom...I could have stopped down to f8, but then I would have had a standard lion cub image that almost every visitor to Africa's game parks have. :)

I opted for something different here to place the emphasis on the facial expression and protruding tongue. The weather was overcast with a storm brewing - there was no warm light to speak of and the colours are faithful to my recollection of the scene. When processing others of this sighting I will play around with manual white balance adjustments in RAW.

[Tom Graham]

Hi Morkel - thanks for explaining, I suspected that facial look was what you were after. And, I'm not saying color balance is bad, just not what I'd expect.
Seen cubs that young I'd guess four times on safari. Just so cute, I'm sure glad I'm not shooting 35mm film when I'm around them!!! When I was with Marius C. in May 2007 we found two tiny cubs with mom very late in sunny afternoon. I'll put up shot or two of them here before long. (Definitely "warm" color on those!).
Tom

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Morkel, you can't help but love this little guys, cute expression.

Not sure if this helps. Exposure Drop gamma 0.90 tweak in Curves & slective colour added a tad more USM?

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks Tom and Steve - Steve your repost works well. I thought about darkening it some more but didn't want to make it look underexposed, but your settings are spot on.

[Stu Bowie]

Hey mate, the protruding tongue puts this over the top. Good eye contact, and steve's repost justs adds that little extra with regards to the toning down of the overall image. ( there I go with the "toning down" bit again. )

[Steve Kaluski]

I thought about darkening it some more but didn't want to make it look underexposed, but your settings are spot on.

I would go back to the RAW Morkel, that was just a tweak on the web image, think what can be achieved now with the original:):):):)

Steve

[Tom Graham]

I feel that the differences I see in the original post and two re-works are so small that it is monitor dependent. That is, anyone of them may look best depending on whose monitor we are using.
Tom

[Steve Kaluski]

Seems like both Morkel and I can see the difference Tom and we have different monitors.

However, I am not going down that route.

[Tom Graham]

I have a different monitor also. I did not say I do -not- see differences. I do. I said the differences are tiny - to me. And that my (or your) preference of image could depend on whether I'm looking at my monitor, or I'm or looking at yours, or looking at Morkel's. At least I tried to say that.
Tom

[Troy Lim]

Nice shot to begin with, really like Steve's repost.
Hope I could photograph something like this one day.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks Stu, Steve & Troy!