Bobcat at Point Reyes National Seashore, My First Post for 2015
Hi Folks,
Happy New Year! I have been absent for a while on this forum with work, travel, family and lack of wildlife subjects. We had been vacationing at Point Reyes National Seashore, about 1 hour North of San Francisco for the past 20 years and have seen bobcat images there, but never had a chance to see one in real life. By chance, I got connected with Daniel Dietrich on Face Book and booked a day with him via Point Reyes Safari (http://www.pointreyessafaris.com/#!t...tinerary/c1eel). Daniel is the local expert on bobcats and we had 3 sightings. I learned how to let the bobcat go across a hill and then go around waiting for it to show up instead of chasing it. This image captured shortly after the bobcat and I saw one another after I rounded the small hill separating us. He saw me, looked up to eye me for a few seconds, then calmly turned and went his way. I had other images with complete legs, but I love this one as it has better light and shooting angle.
very nice sighting of this bobcat, have seen some of your others on the blue board. For me the overall image is just a tad to bright as well the bobcat. Had it in PS tamed a tad the highlights in the face. Grabbed the levels and added some midtones, that brought it to a better look. Go ahead and try if you like, but as usual just me
It looked like a bright sunny day, what was the reason for ISO 1600 unless you are like me in the past
How wonderful to see one of these elusive cats and to get a shot! I like that you got his expression looking at you; but just a tad too bright for me, but that is just me! Don't know if you use any photo editing software, but if so, perhaps you could try Anette's recommendation?
Hi Loi - Happy New Year and good to see you posting. Great look to camera though I am not a fan of the blocked legs. Excellent points and suggestions by Anette.
Hi Anette, good suggestions. I used luminosity mask to tame the highlights, reduce brightness, and moved the Levels a little bit to the right to darken the image. I think this looks better.
Rachel, pity about the blocked legs. That was my first impression too. Will post other images later with the legs, but the light or background isn't as nice. It is telling me that I should go back and spend more time there to get better images.
Thank you all for your comments.
Loi
Last edited by Loi Nguyen; 01-15-2015 at 08:02 PM.
Beautiful animal snapped at a perfect look-back moment Loi! I find all of the OOF FG a little distracting but I guess that was out of your control. Had it been mine I would have played around with a much closer crop to keep focus on the cat (if it could be done without loosing sharpness of course).
Last edited by Tobie Schalkwyk; 01-16-2015 at 01:24 AM.
RP looks much better to me. I might would "erase" the white branch "staying" the bobcat in the BG.
looking forward to see more of this nice cat from you
Hi Loi, the RP is far better, this really should have been your OP . Agree with Anette about the arching white branch. Quite like the pano format, although it might be a tad long????
Hi Loi, the RP is far better, this really should have been your OP . Agree with Anette about the arching white branch. Quite like the pano format, although it might be a tad long????
TFS
Steve
Steve, I know, my PP skills for wildlife has become rusty I think. Time to get back to it. Loi
Hi Loi , welcome back with a nice species that is not that often shown .
RP is way better from tonal /color POV , if you could handle the crunchy stuff better i think the image would benefit from it. I am fine with the overall comp , but the cut off legs not ideal as others already said .
Just asking curious , why is there such difference between again and wildlife for you , i do not see that much of a difference .
Loi I like the angle and pose here, good colours too.
Exposure on the RP is much better, and I agree both versions looks a bit crunchy/oversharpened to me?
The RP is a vast improvement Loi, although I'd back off on the sharpening a little on the cat, not sure if you could have gone up a little to avoid the cutoff legs, but understand this may not be possible.
Thank you all. I'm on a lap top, so my brightness level may not be right, but from my recollection, the scene was a pretty bright afternoon, to me the OP may be more representative of the 3PM afternoon sun (sunset at 5PM) than the RP. Anyway I decided to give it another try, reduced the black from 3 to 0, back off sharpening, cropped a little tighter. It's probably as good as it is going to get. Not something that I would hang on my wall, but still it is a good exercise and was great to be out there with the cat.
Andreas, for me sharpening is routinely done with 110/0/0.3 for my avian images. The feather details often look right. This setting is often too crunchy for wildlife. may be because of the hair different or the lack of DOF in some cases since I routinely shoot at F5.6 and 700mm? Next time I should try to shoot wildlife at F8 instead for more DOF, especially since I have the SS to spare.
Anette, ISO-1600 was just lazy on my part since I was shooting with the 1DX and setting the camera for a white tailed kite just because the bobcat sighting.
Hi Loi , i sharpen my output images with 250 / 0,3 / 2% / lens blur in smart sharpen PS CC , split the sharpen layer in a light and a dark half and go to 30 and 60 opacity . I do not think you need to shoot wildlife with more f stop just for more detail .
One fantastic sighting, I would love to see a Bobcat in real life. We've been missing you on BPN, welcome back, and I wish you a wonderful 2015!
Regarding this lovely Bobcat, you already received a number of comments and done 3 RP's, little for me to add here except to say I agree with most comments above regarding composition and the sharpening on the subject itself. Your final RP is best IMO, if and when you find some time to reply I would like to know whether this is a large crop?
I like the warm BG colours and that you established eye contact with the subject. I do not quite understand why you shoot routinely at 5.6 - always a good thing to shoot at various apertures (if time allows) ,you have more choices when it comes to PP work and decide later which images to keep and which to discard.
Do post some more when you have a chance, it's great to have you back