Fire in Water !

[haseeb badar]

Hello everyone ! Sorry for my absence for past 3 weeks. But all this time it had been raining tigers and I would like to start with a tiger image appropriate for this months theme.

This veteran female popularly known as Madhuri ( named after a bollywood Filmstar ) was once the dominant female of Tadoba tiger reserve but she moved out of her territory in last few years and has been rising a litter of cubs ( a few months old now ) in the buffer area of the park. We sighted her during our afternoon safari as we waited and waited for her to emerge from the forest to come down and quench her thirst. The cubs did came out but were quite shy and held back into the thicket and had their share of water later in the evening.

DPP 4.5 , CS6, WB, curves, selective colour, reduce the contrast, sharpening, cropped slightly from the bottom and also slightly from the rhs and top .

Canon 1DX MK II, Canon 200-400mm f4 IS II with 1.4x TC, bean Bag.

1/2500 sec; f/5.6; ISO 1600.

All your comments and suggestions are much appreciated .

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Stunning beauty this Haseeb. Nice pose with the drinking behaviour taking this up many notches. Good techs and PP. Waiting to see more. Where was this ?

[Mike Poole]

Simply stunning frame Haseeb, great subject, superb pose, excellent colours, the eye contact is fantastic. I'm 50/50 on whether I'd clean up the BG a little but this really is an excellent shot

Mike

[keith mitchell]

Haaseb I totally agree with the previous comments ,this is lovely from the drinking pose to the drops of water from it's tail,no nits from me I think it's wonderful.

Keith.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Haseeb - A great start to your images from this most recent trip. Love the drinking pose, eye contact and low pov. Techs look good. Looking forward to seeing more.

TFS,
Rachel

[Jonathan Ashton]

Beautiful image I like the drinking pose and the curved tail. Given the proximity to the tiger I think I would have used f8.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Haseeb, lovely image, beautiful tiger. If mine I would clean up the background but understand if you do not do that. Thank you for sharing.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Haseeb, nice image, but I think you can easily give it a bit more 'pop' with some Curves, Saturation and some mid tone saturation using only a couple of colour channels. Removing the blemishes in the BKG would be better and less than 30 seconds to do and I'm not cloning it. Might have gone for f/9.

Welcome to the 200-400 a hefty beast, but you will like it, hope the muscles hold out, just be careful with the TC.

If it's where I think it is then I see there is a new route down, drop me a line.

Cheers
Steve