Getting His Feet Wet

[Edward Arthur]

Tried to avoid a square/centered comp but wanted the termite mound UL, some bottom view and lots of environment.

Taken at Duba Plains, Okavango Delta, Botswana.

Canon 6D
Zeiss 80-200/4
f/5.6 1/1250 ISO 400
HH and manual focus

Basic tweaks in DPP, selective smart sharpnening in PS CC on subject and some curves.

Don, no BG blur this time. It is what it is. :)

[Diane Miller]

Nice to be so close to a lion, especially one in the water. It looks sharp with good SS on the splashing water, but too much on the cool side. I don't think the termite mound is contributing anything -- it's very flat in tonalities and is cut off by the edge of the frame. Unfortunately, cropping it out removes the sharp grass clump near the left edge, leaving the OOF vertical stems to be more prominent. I do think the grass clump to the right of the termite mound serves to balance the lion, though.

There is an area in the LL, right on the frame edge, that pulls my eye, and one yellowish area about 1/3 of the way in, right at the bottom edge.

[Edward Arthur]

Thanks much for the feedback!

Ok, here's another attempt. I took out the termite mound, pushed out further right for "walking room" and tried to warm it up a little. Maybe, maybe not. (This glass tends to push the blues and saturate.)

[Diane Miller]

I think this one is a better composition.

Regardless of what the lens does to the colors, just look at the image as it comes into the raw converter and have a quick look at the Auto WB as well as As Shot. Most of the "presets" are awful, but as shot and auto can sometimes work. The point is, they will give you a different "look" that the initial one your brain may be compensating for. Then tweak the WB and Tint sliders till you get the correct look. There is nothing "right" about initial WB in a raw file, with ANY converter. And unfortunately we don't have the equivalent of a histogram for color. But in an image where there is an area that should be neutral gray, there is an eyedropper that will make that correction. It may not be perfect either, but you can tweak from there.

Correcting color also depends on a decent monitor that is calibrated and profiled, but from all the images I see on BPN, which must come from a wide range of monitors, almost everyone seems to do a good job. The more common issue is going too warm, which is a look we naturally seem to favor.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Nice capture of a stunning beast, Ed! 'Nuff good stuff had been said all round. I probably would have gone for a 16x9 crop, getting rid of even more of the sky. Your RP is a great improvement - the sharpening is a little lower than on the OP too - much better!