Little Athlete!

[Morkel Erasmus]

I couldn't let Harshad and Grant get in ALL the cute images for the week :)

This is another shot taken at our cheetah sighting where a mom and 4 cubs were feasting on a springbok right next to our vehicle in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

This little guy took a springbok leg to one side and gave me better opportunities for close-ups than when they were all sticking their faces into the buck's belly.

If you look carefully you can see my vehicle's reflection in his eyes! :D I liked that I could get a background here that was all OOF cheetah skin pattern.

Techs:
Canon 7D with 100-400mm L IS USM @ 310mm
f5.6 @ 1/500 SS @ ISO-500
Exp +0.3

[Harshad Barve]

Thanks a ton for posting this Morkelbhai , Incredibly cute cub . Blood , fly and twisted tounge adds so much , Big congrats
TFS

[Steve Kaluski]

Morkel another round of selective USM on the face would help bring out the detail, (have tried it), especially the main features, eyes, nose, mouth. Would also clone the white blob out too on the lhs.

Not sure why you need to drop the compression scale to 4 when saving, would go to 12 always, however Saving for Web you don't need to do this? Curious.

TFS
Steve

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice eye contact. Slightly more space at the bottom would have been even better. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Rachel Hollander]

Morkel - Love this. Great eye contact, the tongue twisting to clean the face adds to it. and I like the oof fur as a bg.

TFS,
Rachel

[Stephen Stephen]

Very nice Morkel. I too love the tongue and eye contact. This portrait is a tiny bit tight in the frame for my personal taste but I woud still love to have this in my collection.

[Steve Canuel]

Looks like he enjoyed that leg. I like the cheetah fur BG too.

[Troy Lim]

Hope one day I could go and shoot these animals with you guys. TFS.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks for the comments everybody...

Steve I normally use "Save for web" here and optimised to 200kb? A lot of fine details in the shot so I think the resulting quality was just around 70 on the slider...

Here is a repost with a sharper face and another round of shadows/highlights

The white blob is another cheetah's tail, I left it in as I like the fact that there's so much 'cheetah' in the shot :)

[Danny J Brown]

Morkel - Wonderful close-up as I can almost smell the kill emanating from the little critters breath. Your repost is killeriferous.

DB

[Steve Kaluski]

I think this is better Morkel, WDYT?

Re the cheetah 'white' blob, I think is so marginal that really the removal would improve the image. Only you know what it is, but it does not have any real substance to the overall image and therefore to the viewer/reader it would not be missed IMHO. :)

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks Danny & Steve

Steve yes I do think the repost is better, thanks :)
I'll leave the cloning for now - still on my "rather not clone" phase hehe, at least for wildlife and birds...

[Alfred Forns]

Like the re post Morkel Excellent timing to capture the perfect expression !! btw saving wise you can have excellent image quality even with less kbs!!! About the only ones that suffer greatly are landscapes and stitch panos !!!

[Morkel Erasmus]

thank you Al