A sleeping pose making the Leopard look totally at rest. Every few minutes he did wake up and stare at the camera. I took this picture sometime back but thought I would like to post it here. Yala Nature Park, Sri Lanka.
Nikon D 700 200-400 F/4 400mm f/7.1 1/250 ISO 400 Taken from vehicle, Beanbag at 3.30pm. PS cropped ( approx 60% of Image) Shadow/highlights Levels adjusted, NR BG and sharpened.
Hi Hirand, in all the short time I have been at BPN I never seen an image of a Leopard like this, great capture & vision.
I love the body posture and the tail leading off to the bottom RHC. The crop is spot on for me and helps emphasis the subject well. camera techs looks good, likewise the PP. Just be careful with Shadow/Highlights, it can be, IMHO quite aggressive but in small amounts good, personally I prefer Curves, but we all have our own like. Morkel be interested to know your thoughts on colour Balance here, does the image have that slight look of Nikon?
Just a thought, you could try in your RAW converter, LR or ACR (not sure what you use) just to drop the exposure down a bit for the BKD and if you use CS6 apply one of their new gimmicks, seems to have worked on this, I blurred the BKD a bit more and managed to blend that branch in WDYT? Happy to delete if this goes away from your vision of the image.
Great work, congratulations on this one. This year has really produced some excellent Leopard shots on BPN and overall some brilliant work, thanks to all.
Hi Steve, Thanks for your comments. Like the re-post very much. I do use LR and will drop the exposure. Blurring the BKD and blending the branch has made the Leopard stand out better in the image. I have a few more images of different poses of this Leopard which I will post in the coming days.
I have been reading and have learn t the finer points from BPN in the last years.
Hi Hiran, if you are using LR great, ACR is very similar, I prefer LR as it's easier in it's layout/function, guess it's just personal preference. If you need to know about the blurring part just let me know.
cheers
Steve
Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.
I am envious of all these great leopard images! This is indeed an interesting and very different pose. Amazing that the leopard was so relaxed with the vehicle so close. Steve's subtle tweaks adding a bit more depth is very good technique to use.