This "good mum" had just killed a good size Male Impala and her three cubs were busy eating buried in "pesky grass", luckily she looked up in typical Cheetah behaviour looking out for somebody trying to steal the kill, nothing came, but little was left the following morning except Vultures.
Taken in Ruaha Game Reserve, Tanzania, 3rd July 2012,
EOS 1D MkIV
500mm F4 hand-held from low position
F5.6, ISO 800, 1/800
PS the conversion to JPEG has not worked very well
I like the composition and the soft light on the cat. Doesn't look bad on my monitor so I think compression wasn't too bad.
I might try to get rid of the green thing right to the Cheetah but it is only a minor distraction.
Markus,
Thanks for your comment, the light was indeed very soft I think mainly due to surrounding foliage and the fact that it was not very sunny. I tried a few "over-exposed" shots as well, but I am not to sure if they worked out so good.
As to the "leaf" I was undecided so I left it in
"It looks a lot worse than the TIFF, must be due to compression?"
You mean detail, sharpness??? Since sharpness requires contrasting edges, soft light most often presents sharpness "issues". I'd try more sharpening at twice the shown size, i.e. 2000pixels wide, make it look oversharpened. Then resize image down to 1024 px for showing. Just an idea, something to play with.
Tom
Should you desire...you can change the color of the green foliage easily without removing it.
TIP...
Duplicate the background layer (Cmd/Ctrl J), Select the Brush tool (B), holding the Alt/Option Key (turns the brush into a color picker) click on the color you want to use as a replacement. Change the Bland mode to Color (Alt/Option Shift C) adjust brush opacity (you can use the numerical key pad), use layer opacity to tweak.
Chas
Last edited by Charles Glatzer; 08-11-2012 at 03:32 PM.