Tiger Lessons in Dominance

These 18 month old tigers were play?-fighting in the water but way to far away for a good photo and the background and foreground was mostly a very ugly bank of dirt and rocks. I replaced the rocks and dirt (and their shadows on the water around the tigers), cropped a lot and used Topaz Clean for the finishing touch. After many attempts, I think this is the best I can do. I lost some splash which I regret and at the last minute feared that it is to dark so I lightened it.

Original taken with Nikon D3S, 500mm f4 plus 1.4 converter, f8, ISO 800,1/640 sec, Manual Exposure.

Laurie, this is great. The pan works! Love the energy and action in the photo................what a great moment to capture. The Clean treatment enhances the tiger markings so well. Whatever you did to the background/foreground, it worked out well.........Excellent.

Laurie, I love this! I love the composition and the Topaz filtering and the pano and framing (in fact, everything:S3:)

Wonderful action image, Laurie. The pano presentation is perfect.

Strong...very strong...image...print it, matte it, frame it and hang it on the wall. Well seen, well captured, and beautifully processed...wow.

Awesome action captured!! Love the processing and the end result! Great job!

Quite lovely Laurie. Love the action and the treatment too!

Laurie,

What a wonderful photo!

M.

Great idea on the processing. You properly put the emphasis on the awesome action and removed all else. I really like how the Topaz clean looks on the tigers and the splashing water. (I may try that on some of my tiger images!) I wonder how just a bit more saturation & a tiny bit more brightening might look.

Nancy,

If you got photos like we did at Tadoba - far way and bad background and foreground you have to do an out of the box application to make something of it. I have reprocessed this photo serveral times since this version to add more of the splash that I deleted in masking and more contrast. The four tigers kept playing in the water for a long time and I just loved the photos and had to do something with a few of them.