Hello everyone ! Thank you for all your comments and suggestions on my previous post.
Here is my first leopard sighting from Botswana ! She was a sub-adult and was scanning the delta for its prey. That didnt materialised unfortunately, but she made quite a bit of stalking attempts to get nearer to her prey, a quick learner of sorts .
Dpp4.5, CS6, WB, selective colour, color balance, levels, sharpening , cropped from top and bottom slightly , bean Bag.
Canon 1dX MK II, Canon EF200-400mm f/4L IS USM EXT.
1/640 sec; f/6.3; ISO 3200.
All your C&C's are most welcome and highly appreciated .
Hi Haseeb, a fine image to start with. Nice vertical composition, lovely looking leopard with good sharpness and detail. Nice clean BG. Appears to be slightly blown HLs on the chest & snout. Love the colours and gaze. TFS, look forward to more from your trip!
Hi Haseeb - What a beautiful leopard and lovely color palette. Yes, too bad about the blown hls on the neck and chin. They are a bit too much for me. I also find the comp slightly awkward and a bit in between. You need to either go a bit tighter and perhaps some ccw rotation as it feels like the leopard is leaning slightly or to go wider in the field and include the whole leopard and her feet.
Drop-dead gorgeous light and treatment here, Haseeb. I'm happy to overlook the blown highlights - but if there's a chance of recovering these, I'd love to see a repost. Otherwise, nothing I'd change here. I could also see this working as a horizontal crop with more cropped off the bottom particularly. Really enjoyed looking at this.
Thank you everyone for comments and suggestions , highly appreciated.
Here is a RP based on your suggestions , did a slight CCW rotation ( it was actually more in a stalking pose and slightly inclined forward) and also cropped tighter from bottom. Also tried to reduce the HL's on the rim. The HL is not showing clipped on the histogram though even for the OP!
Haseeb - I would crop more from the bottom to the bottom of the chest, above where the legs start. While the hls may not show as clipped because they are below 255 in R,G, & B values, they are still what I would call "blown" with no detail.
Thank you everyone for comments and suggestions , highly appreciated.
Here is a RP based on your suggestions , did a slight CCW rotation ( it was actually more in a stalking pose and slightly inclined forward) and also cropped tighter from bottom. Also tried to reduce the HL's on the rim. The HL is not showing clipped on the histogram though even for the OP!
Please let me know WDYT !
Thank you once again .
Haseeb, the histogram won't tell you if very small areas are clipped because they will represent only a tiny part of the graph so are unlikely to show up there. You should turn on the highlight and shadows warnings in DPP and they will show up then (but only if all channels are clipped - but you can detect that by hovering your mouse over suspect areas and looking at the RGB values reported as you move your mouse around). It's best to set the shadow warning to about 5 and the highlight warning to about 245. Use a combination of exposure, white point and highlight reduction to fix any highlight clipping. If clipping isn't fixed at that stage, you will never recover it in subsequent processing.
I very much like the framing, intense stare and being side on has provided along with the light, fantastic detail. With the raking light from the side I would expected a bit more tonal difference on the Leopard, a bit darker. Having the blown whites I haven't got an issue with, otherwise you will make the whole image dark, good call IMHO. Perhaps f/5.6 adding a bit more SS, but... My only thought would be to add some midtone in the mid and 3/4 areas, just adds a bit more tonal depth.
INKWE !
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Originally Posted by haseeb badar
