A wild Sloth bear mother and cub. It was raining and light levels pretty low.
Canon EOS 40D, Canon EF 400mm f2.8 L IS USM, ISO 640, f2.8, 1/400, about 25% crop (little bit from top and mostly to the right to remove a portion of the sky). Comments welcome.
Nice image of a rarely photographed species! I agree that the bears themselves are dark, if you could selectively lighten them and bring down the sky a bit, it might help. It looks like you have great detail on the bears, but it is hard to tell with the low brightness. Nice rainy mood to the image though.
I tried a quick SHadow/Highlight adjustment and it works great on the shadows. Just remember to hit it with +10 to +12 midtone contrast too when doing the S/H.