Leopard Warning!

[Grant Atkinson]

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mmf2.8 is lens at 120mm. S/Spd 1/3200s, Av f 2.8. iso 400. Metering Eval L/side of leopard lightened, as well as exposure brightened on eyes, and some OOF backlit leaves removed from above leopard, in the sky, all done in ACR5.7 and CS4. Cropped to 11mp. 27 May 2010, 07h36am. Location Mombo, Okavango Delta, Botswana.
Some explanation needed of my settings..moments before taking this pic the cat was deep in the shade of the tree, with no light on her, hence my wide-open aperture. I wasn't able to change settings in time. Pose was momentary.
Also explanation needed of her expression. She had an impala in the tree, and was on the ground. At the sound of nearby lions roaring she moved to the tree. I had earlier taken up position close to a level branch at the tree, as we had no view of her in bush on the ground. After climbing the tree, she stood in the shade, looking in the direction of the lions, away from us. When she suddenly turned to use the sloping branch to descend the tree, she was confronted with us at eye-level and she gave us a warning snarl before moving toward us along the branch, and dropping to the ground again. This is the same leopard that was filmed in the documentary called Eye of the Leopard, called Legadima. There were two other stationery vehicles at the sighting, and no super close approaches were made by the vehicles.
All C and C welcome,
cheers
Grant

www.grantatkinson.com (http://www.grantatkinson.com)

[Marc Mol]

Great story and effective eye level approach on this famous girl Grant. Love the snarly pose!
Would love to see a larger image submitted.
TFS

[Grant Atkinson]

Hi Marc,
If you mean a higher resolution, what is the max dimensions I can submit to BPN for a vertical? I have posted the original crop here in this repost. Perhaps interested members c and c my posted crop and processing better having this idea of the starting point. This post is as shot, no cropping. It was a great sighting. Thanks for commenting.
Cheers
grant

[Sabyasachi Patra]

You made the most of difficult lighting conditions. The eye level shot makes it engaging. It seems you were pretty close as you got full frame image at 120mm with vertical framing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Grant

Amazing getting that close !!! Exposure wise check the histogram, should be under exposed but just under two stops. For something like this you need to crank the compensation to the positive side and don't be surprised to blow the sky .... check for blinkies on the cat/tree but don't worry if you get others blinking !!

Like the pose but particularly having the cat above looking down !!! Excellent !!!!

[Grant Atkinson]

Thanks Sabyasachi and Al, I was pretty close, and as I wrote in the original post, I had already taken up a position at the tree before the leopard even climbed it. She was the one who chose the distance and gave us the opportunity. It happened pretty quick, and I only had time to get an AF point onto her face. Would have been good to have been ready and expose correctly as well..next time.
Cheers
Grant

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Grant, the original post is 660px high, BPN allow 800px, so you can increase your posting.

With this image not having the whole cat in view does really worry me as the emphasis is on the stance and snarl captured well. Appreciate the explanation re setting, very much appreciated and really does help the reader to build a picture, sorry no pun intended. If it was me I might just crop a fraction off the top retaining everything else, but this is just my thought.

TFS
Steve

[thijs broekkamp]

Very nice pose, and the warning signal is awesome! Your orignal photo looks better in colour, it is a bit darker.

[DanWalters]

Love the snarl and the great eye contact. Very powerful image!

[Hilary Hann]

Having some interaction is, for me, worth losing quite a few technical details. I know that others here would perhaps disagree, but it takes a lot of observation and patience to get these kinds of close ups. I think you did pretty well with your pp, given the circumstances.

[Grant Atkinson]

Thanks Dan, Steve, Thijs and Hilary for your comments. Much appreciated. I will re-evaluate my processing and cropping of the image with the c and c in mind. BPN is really helping me get more of an idea of what can be done, specially with images like this where lighting and position were tricky.
cheers
Grant

[Harshad Barve]

wow , you gotta love this stare
TFS