Kalahari Cheetah

[Morkel Erasmus]

We found this lone cheetah very early one morning just outside the 'Twee Rivieren' camp of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. He was walking alongside the car for a while, scanning the terrain for breakfast. The sun was only beginning to rise so getting sharp images were a challenge.

Shortly after this shot was taken he crossed the road behind us, went to sniff a camelthorn tree and then disappeared into the distance.

Techs:
Canon 40D with 100-400mm L IS USM @ 400mm
f5.6 @ 1/200 SS @ ISO-800
Exp 0

[Ken Watkins]

This looks pretty sharp to me and of course you have a lovely orange eye. If the original is up to it I would crop this down to a "head and shoulders" shot.

[Harshad Barve]

I may crop it more tight Morkel, beautiful predator posing for you , nice sharp image
I really dont know lighting and ground conditions , but I can see mangeta cast in this image which can be easily fixed
TFS

[David Fletcher]

Lovely portrait captured Morkel. With Harshad on the magenta cast, which is poss' what you may have wanted, :), but a tad more Green in Color balance will fix that if not. Thanks for sharing.

[Danny Laredo]

Always nice to see a Cheetah image. Another vote for a tighter crop.

[Katie Rupp]

Hi Morkel, great pose and sharpness and another vote for a tighter crop. Thanks for the background story, too.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks for the comments and suggestions everyone. This was already cropped to about 65-70% of the original image. Will explore the tighter crop.

I will check out the cast at home on my decent screen (this one isn't calibrated), but the colour in the picture I uploaded from home was spot on as I saw it that day - the Kalahari has amazing colour shades at sunrise and sunset.

[Morkel Erasmus]

okay everyone, here is the closer crop as requested, and I also added some greens and yellows to especially the midtone colours. I still like the original colours more as it is closer to what I saw on the day.

your thoughts?

[Marc Mol]

Hi Morkel

Nice image here, I too constantly battle with what we really see in our images (ie. the light) at that very instant of capture as opposed to how the image looks when we view it either in print or PC.
Having said that, I think your repost does improve on the original.
I remember looking back on some images I made In Zambia 2 years ago and thought how gold some of that light really was and think it surely couldn't have been that intense??

[Harshad Barve]

Repost is a definate improvement Morkel
TFS