African Wild Cat Kitten

[Morkel Erasmus]

We came across a pair of African Wild Cat kittens very early one morning during our recent trip to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.
I was stoked to be so close to them - they were literally in the shelter of a thorny thicket right by the roadside. The light was awful - overcast, a few minutes before actual sunrise and they were in the shade of a dense thicket...pushed the ISO up on the D3s and wasn't disappointed with the results.

The more adventurous of the duo came out into the lush grass (some good rains were had) but was still under the shade of the thorn thicket.

I had the 1.4x TC on and went for tight portraits as I didn't know how long he would pose like this (hence I didn't want to spend precious time removing the TC).
I had to lower the SS to 1/100 to get ISO from 12800 and 8000 to 5000. :eek3:


Techs: Nikon D3s with Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II + 1.4x TC @ 700mm
f5.6 @ 1/100 SS @ ISO-5000
90% of full frame, cropped some OOF greens from bottom
Warmed up WB a tad as it was just 'too green' for my tastes...
Ran Nik Color Efex Tonal Contrast (doing it with many of my shots recently, love the results :t3)

[Rachel Hollander]

Morkel - nice detail on the kitten, the eyes are great. The chin has a slight greyish cast but it may have been that way. The couple of times I've seen one in the wild, they took off immediately. Maybe a little more NR on the bg?

TFS,
Rachel

[laurie golden]

It is these little surprises that keeps me going out and looking for that unusual shot. You have it here and you did a great job of capturing it in low light and in processing it.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Morkel
excellent portrait of these little fellows,techs extreme good under the circumstances you described.i agree with some more NR on the background.may be tone down the greens ,just a tad.
and evtl remove that brown piece of stick on LHS.but i am not really sure about the stick ,try yourself.

would love to see them again in the future.

Cheers Andreas

[Tom Graham]

Impressive techs. Like the color, if WB needed warming, fine for me. Nice soft light. BG noise(?) doesn't bother me, but I probably would clone out brown stick. Overall very pretty, I have not seen African Wild cat.
Tom

[Steve Canuel]

Very nice IQ on this Morkel, the eyes look like glass. Are you sure this isn't just somebody's house cat :t3?

[Marc Mol]

What a stroke of luck to see a WC kitten, I've been fortunate to see a few adults but never kittens, so a BIG congrats on this Morkel. :5
Nice pose here with good detail, can understand why you didn't stop down to f/6.3 with SS at a premium.:w3
TFS

[Ken Watkins]

Morlel,

What a rarity a Wild Cat not running away, perhaps Mum had not taught it that yet:w3

Remarkable detail given the circumstances thanks for sharing

[Steve Kaluski]

Superb detail Morkel and the very rich & vivid green certainly lifts the subject. The stick in the BKG, LHS does jar a little, personally I would lose it to keep the BKG consistent and so you eye keeps on the subject.

TFS
Steve

[Dumay de Boulle]

Nice to get one so out in the open with a great clean BG...Lovely stuff mate!

[Harshad Barve]

Beautiful image , loving those eyes here
TFS

[AdityaPadhye]

Lovely eyes and bg! Is it just me or does the left side of the image look slightly darker? Or maybe its because of the shade under the bush

[Morkel Erasmus]

Thanks so much for the kind feedback, everyone.
Those who've known me for a while will know that I will not clone that stick out, just because of my personal workflow ethic for natural history images :w3...but I see your point on it.
It was a really special sighting, and in hindsight I could've made better images than I did...but that's a story for another time.

Rachel - I may have 'burned' the chin one round too many :e3