KTP Future King

[Rudi van den Heever]

Taken in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa during May 2011. An attempt at a conversion in Nik Silver Effex Pro 2 and resizing and sharpening in CS5... Your honest comments will be appreciated!:S3: Do not dig the grave to deep!:e3 Some IQ might be lost due to compression for uploading...

Equipment: Canon 7D and 500mm F4 L IS lens
Settings: 1/2500s at F6.3 and ISO 400 (image is full frame)

[Hilary Hann]

Rudi, no grave digging from me. Very nice conversion, well done. I like the in camera composition very much, love the head turn on the lion and the look on his face. The glint in the lion's left eye leads me to think that you may be able to bring up a little more detail and that would/may be interesting. Lovely soft background … really think this is an excellent lion portrait. TFS.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Rudi, good to see you trying something different. I like the HA and general composition, however personally I am not keen on the toning, but that as I say is purely persona, but you could try 7 in the toning which might be a little more in keeping. I do also find it a little too contrasty and if you go back to Adjustment layers as you will remember from last time, I would suggest the following:

Levels, move the middle slider to the left a fraction just to open the detail up
Exposure, drop a fraction for the whites, ie slightly on the cheeks, but especially the chin
Highlight/Shadow, just to open up the left eye area, nose, gum and even perhaps the eye nearest you.

Then with some simple masking you can pop the detail back in.

I would also perhaps think about dropping the sharpening a tad?

Hope this helps.

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Rudi - nice pose and comp. Good suggestions above for taking this to the next level.

TFS,
Rachel

[Dumay de Boulle]

I like the textures and the conversion works for my taste.

[Robert Amoruso]

Rudi,

I think this presentation worked out very well. Good post-processing technique of this well-composed image.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice to see you experimenting, Rudi!
I quite like the contrast and the toning here (as Steve said it's all up to taste)...though I agree with Steve the sharpening is just-just over the line of the lion looking 'scrunchy' :w3
The dark vignetted look also works well to isolate the lion.

[Rudi van den Heever]

Thanks everyone! Your comments and advice are much appreciated!

[Rudi van den Heever]

Had a busy time at the office so could not re-work the image as suggested and did it now... An issue of taste I suppose, but thanks Steve, did some adjustments as suggested and I my vote will g for the repost! What do you think?:w3 This is the minimum compression to be able to post under 204KB...:e3

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Rudi, I think this is much better, but as I have said before, you are the author, are you happy? :w3

For what it's worth this was my take on the original, but a change to the toning.

cheers
Steve

[Hilary Hann]

I think that the 2 reposts show that an interesting composition can be presented in several ways with success and without diminishing the original vision of the photographer. Nice one. :S3:

[Rudi van den Heever]

Interesting Steve... Works well too! Thanks Hilary!:w3

[Morkel Erasmus]

Love your repost Rudi! I like how sepia toning works with lions as they are naturally a 'tawny' colour :w3, so I opt for yours a tad more than Steve's though I like what he did too.

For what it's worth - do you mind posting the original colour version too? :Whoa!:

[Rudi van den Heever]

Thanks Morkel! Will post tonight!:w3