Tiger on hunt

[Sadananda Koppalkar]

Was not active since many months due to personal commitments. Thought of starting back with this post from my recent trip.

My purpose of visiting Kanha national park was to just experience the forest and the beauty it offers with vast landscapes and various habitats. Nature blessed me with this sighting of Tiger hunting down wild boar amidst the grass and carrying it across the track. This tiger has 4 cubs to feed. It hid this kill near by and walked away to get the cubs. We waited for this tiger to return with cubs but didn’t happen until late evening.
Couldn't compose this image with good habitat, as the tiger emerged from thickets and quickly crossed the track leaving me very less time to even think.

Nikon D500
Nikon 200-400mm f/4
SS: 1/1250
FL: 310mm
ISO: 320
Shot at Kanha National Park (India)
Nov 2017

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Sadananda, welcome back with a great subject 'The Tiger'.

Firstly check your Workflow and look for any boxes that are not 'checked' and that they ensure that when you write your image for web output , that it embeds an sRGB colour profile, not RGB to ensure there isn't any colour shift and or that it's displayed to it's best.

Lucky to have the kill in front of you and side on as it drags it across the track/road clear of any distracting elements between the from legs. Roads are never great, but I know they are unavoidable in India, but here I feel it helps because of no distracting items as I mentioned earlier. No idea on the capacities of the D500, but I would have gone to either 1/1600 or 2000 and upped the DoF to say f/7.1, and the ISO would marginally have gone up. If you have it, then a little more image content to the left and below, however there appears to be some 'cloning' manipulation near the curl of the tail which looks a little odd??? Although the image appears well exposed, I would pull back the Whites & Highlights, they are not blown, but detail appears slightly lacking in those areas and you might be able to 'burn them back in. I would also apply some more 'perceptual' sharpening to the Tiger & kill.

If you have the time then a quick revisit and I'm sure the image will just pull together a bit more. Look forward to seeing more of these majestic cats from you.

TFS
Steve

PS Nice not to have other 'Gipsy' vehicles in the background and I think the backdrop provided you with the beauty of the forest you were after.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Sadananda ...what a great sighting .
You really got lucky with that tigress crossing the road with the kill. I do like the dragging poses lot.
I would like to echo Steve´s thoughts on tone , color and the cropping.
Regarding the whites ...well they do look recovered too much , greying out already !! Without seeing the raw i bet the HL where blown .The BG does look worked on a little bit too much for my taste , some masking issues along the tigers back and tail . Have you blurred the BG or hammered it with NR ?
Nevertheless with some minor different tweaks i think you get more from the image .

TFS Andreas

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Sadananda - Welcome back and what a great sighting to share! Steve and Andreas have covered the critique well and I agree with the points they raised. I also want to add that I really like the tail curl here.

TFS,
Rachel

[Glenn Pure]

Sadananda, great image here. From what I've read, tiger sightings aren't easy and getting one with prey is a real bonus. The track is unfortunate but unavoidable but doesn't detract greatly for me. I'm happy with the composition too. The first thing I noticed technically was the whites on the tiger which I think need revisiting. If mine, I'd also do some work on either or both the brightness and saturation of the background to reduce both. At present, the pale green in the background is very intense and, while it might represent the scene accurately, does draw away from the tiger. These are all minor niggles though on what is a really great shot.

[John Mack]

great picture of this tiger carrying off its pray too cool.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Sadananda -- What a moment , indeed you were extremely lucky . The critique has been nicely covered and i think just following the above suggestions will help to resurrect this frame.
The BG looks overprocessed as in too much blurring or NR .

TFS !

[Abhijit Deshpande]

Hi Sadanand,
Terrific Moment. Really lucky for you.
The aforementioned critique covers it all very nicely.
I feel you may need to look at the contrast & saturation as well. i find the image too contrasty/ too saturated.
Nonetheless, small issues in an otherwise terrific moment of the wild!! Congrats o that & TFS
Regards
Abhijit

[Sadananda Koppalkar]

Thanks a lot to every one for the excellent critics and comments. I love BPN for this.
Yes as Steve mentioned I think I should change the output to SRGB which is different currently and BG is pretty bad which I realised after posting here. I am not so well versed with such editing though trying it off late. I made the corrections as suggested here and the image looks much better.
Thanks to every one again for taking time and suggesting the corrections and excellent feedback.

Regards,
Sadanand.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Sadanand,

Don't worry too much, as it best to really concentrate on the basics (camera techs and very basic Raw conversion of images) and build on those, all the fine tuning can follow.

Yes as Steve mentioned I think I should change the output to SRGB which is different currently and BG is pretty bad which I realised after posting here. I am not so well versed with such editing though trying it off late.

Check this part of the Forum out, as there are plenty of things that will help you I'm sure. If you can calibrate your monitor that would be great. If the monitor is not calibrated then the output could be wrong and so what you see will be different to others, this is why it's so important and to regularly calibrate it, once a month is regarded as the basis.

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...onal-Resources

Cheers
Steve

[Gabriela Plesea]

Dear Sadananda,
Awesome sighting and I thank you so much for sharing - wow, this is the first time for me to see a tiger with a kill

I find it difficult to add to the above critique from Steve which I believe covers just about everything. And I am certain that with some careful processing you could fix a number of those issues mentioned above.

This is such a special capture, I quite like the image design and especially the curvature of the road, despite the road being a man-made element. I would try tame those HL and maybe look at the BG which seems a bit bright. Not sure you did any noise reduction to the BG but it seems a little over processed (as in too smooth) - was it necessary? Also, I would allow a tad more space below and on the LHS of the frame, if you have it.

Overall a stunning capture and I love the behavioural element. Please share some more from this recent trip, will you?

Kind regards,

[Sadananda Koppalkar]

Thank you so much Steve. It’s very useful. Will browse through and learn from there. I have never done the monitor calibration, your inputs will help me do that.

Thanks Gabriela for stopping by and providing inputs. Have more pics to share surely will post them here.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Cannot wait to see more

Hope you have a super evening!

Kind regards,