This is a Super Mom who has successfully raised 4 cubs to date at Mashatu Game preserve. We waited the entire afternoon and were rewarded with her waking up in the magic light.
1DX
100-400 II @ 321mm
1/500
f7.1
ISO-1600
HH
Side lighting, not possible to position the vehicle other positions due to bush.
Hi Loi cool moment captured and nicely timed .I like the overall comp and the colors in general .
From the tonal POV it does look too HDRish , you have compressed HL and shadows and ending up in flatness across the image .
If nothing is really blown or plugged in the raw i might try the double process attempt to overcome the tonal flattening .I think the image is worth to explore different versions.
Hi Loi - I like the stretching and yawning pose. With all those youngsters I imagine she needs her rest. Unfortunately, I agree with Andreas that the image looks flat and that something seems to have gone amiss in the pp. The face in particular looks like it had to be recovered substantially and doesn't have the level of detail we usually see in your posts. I also think it would be worth starting over here and reprocessing if nothing is really blown.
Hi Andreas and Rachel, I didn't really do much here except to reduce the highlights on the cheetah neck. It was not blown, but there wasn't much detail there, so I applied selectively some Nik to try to bring out more details. i went back to the RAW file and put the highlights back to 0 and I didn't see much change, so not worth a repost. The light angle was at near 90 degrees, so may be that was the reason for not much details coming thru in the fur? Loi