We followed this female leopard (Xikavi) as she made her way to reunite with a nearby male.
The sun was gone and the day had been very dull and overcast anyway.
She made her way through the bush to this swimming pool which belongs to a former lodge that is now used as staff quarters.
The sight of a leopard drinking from the swimming pool was surreal.
I like the way that her eyes pick up the turquoise from the pool. I was also grateful that on such a dull day I got a photo with some colour in it.
I have added a small amount of contrast and saturation but I am not at all sure how to get the best from this image.
I'd really appreciate some suggestions.
Hi Martin - The eyes are a little spooky so a good post for Halloween. It's always difficult when the waning light is against you. I would have opened up my aperture a bit more to increase ss and let more light in in the field.
I took a shot at the pp but the IQ isn't great. There's a blue and cyan cast coming through (most evident in the tail) so the first thing I did was decrease the blues through a hue/saturation adjustment and then reduced the cyans in the whites in selective color. Then I did a levels adjustment selectively to the leopard bringing the rhs in to 243 and then a midtones curves adjustment also selectively to the leopard. Finally I dropped the brightness of everything but the leopard by -3 to give it a bit more pop. WDYT?
I think this is really cool!
Brought a smile to my face.
I like the crop you chose for this as well.
I saw the cyan cast on the tail as mentioned by Rachel.
Another way to "skin the cat" pardon the pun would be to increase the brightness by +6 to the BG and +3 to the leopard thereby lightening the whole image but still adding pop to the leopard!
Gail
Great sighting, Martin. The eyes and tounge sticking out made this image. I'd attempt to brighten the eyes just a tad more. I'm too very poor at seeing color cast, so thank you Rachel for pointing out and showing how to take care of color cast on this image. Loi
Martin - what an interesting sight? Which lodge was this?
I think in terms of colour and processing the fine detail you have underdone yourself here Would love to take a crack at the RAW file if you feel so inclined? Even a high res JPG should do the trick.
This is an astonishing improvement from the OP. Good job! Love the natural colours but the way that the blue is reflected in her eyes.
My only nit is that the face looks a little smooth - perhaps some reduced NR and selective sharpening there.
Spot on.