Caracal mom

[laurie golden]

We found this mother caracal hunting in the lower Mara while her two kittens were hiding nearby. We felt extremely lucky to see and photograph her (and the kittens) on a trip that was full of cats.

Nikon D3S, 500mm f4 plus 1.4 converter
ISO 800, F9, 1/800 sec
Manual exposure

[Harshad Barve]

No C & C from me as I want to seat back and enjoy this frame
TFS

[Ken Watkins]

Laurie,

Now this has rarity value, not normally seen in daylight except it seems in the Mara.:S3::S3:

To me this looks a tad oversharpened and a little too bright, just dragging down the middle in curves would improve this a lot (thanks to Robert for this tip)

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice to see you posting here Laurie!

Lovely sighting indeed...Ken has already mentioned what seems like oversharpening on the coat (the fur looks a bit 'frizzy' :w3) and I agree that toning down overall brightness will help here. You can look at the "sticky threads" to get links to Robert's excellent tutorials for handling bright highlights through a luminosity mask. :Whoa!:

[Rachel Hollander]

Laurie - Great sighting. Good suggestions above to improve this image. I hope you'll post some of the kittens.

TFS,
Rachel

[Pieter de Waal]

Hi Laure a rarity and wonderful oppertunity, detail looks good. The sharpening and light issues have been mentioned and following the suggestions will make this a lovely image.

[laurie golden]

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions for improvement. I have to confess that I just started using Topaz and have been experimenting with many adjustments - perhaps a little to much. I will go back to the original and be more conservative in the future.