Sunshine and Shadows - Tiger in Black and White

[Sabyasachi Patra]

I have been trying to explore the Sunshine and Shadows theme.

Tiger - Panthera tigris tigris. Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve.

Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon EF 400mm f2.8 L IS USM, EF 2xII, ISO 400, f6.3, 1/320, full frame image.
No blurring done during post processing.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Morkel Erasmus]

interesting concept Sabyasachi.

while I do like the play of light here, I am not sold on the overall composition
I think you needed a bit more space on the LHS given the direction the cat is staring into - yet I see that you would only have included more of the OOF tree on that side had you shifted your viewfinder to compose like that. I also feel the cat is not in a position in the frame that is very strong.

Since this is full frame - how about a crop? Here's my suggestion (hope you don't mind)

[Rachel Hollander]

Interesting concept. I like the dappled light and the B&W treatment but I'm not a fan of the extremely oof tree and foliage framing the lhs and bottom. I recognize that this is full frame with the 400 and 2x so getting closer or filing more of the frame with the tiger was probably not possible.

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

I like the concept here Sabyasachi, but I am not sure if it's working. Morkels repost is better, but I think it is just too tight. I keep wanting to 'look around the tree' to get a better view, if that makes sense? The dark tree branch in the BG is slightly distracting for me, but I do like the dappled light coming through and I like the idea of making this a B/W image.

TFS
Steve

[Robert Amoruso]

I would suggest cropping out the OOF tree on the left completely. This is a big distraction and I feel w/o it helps the image a lot.

[Hilary Hann]

I think Robert may have nailed it. Roughly cropping out the oof tree seems to strengthen the image quite a bit. I do like the concept of the image and the way it illustrates the 'light and dark' of the future of wild tigers.