Lovely beast and a very interesting image. Must have been a thrill to photograph!
But, I am not entirely convinced by the composition - seems you have added blur to the hindquarters, and I can see why, but I find the only part with focus - the head - is too close to the right hand edge. Agree with breaking the ROT when appropriate, but think it might have worked better here - IMSHO.
Rachel, the bg colour comes from the last remaining colours after the sun has set, it was slightly darker than this on the original as you can see lower down in the pic, i just upped the exposure a little in the bg to pop the colour a bit.
Gerald, thanks for your comment, the comp is full frame, i had very little space to work with as i was shooting with a fixed focal length and only just managed to fit her in. No blur added to the image, the OOF hind quarters are due to a shallow DOF, i was shooting on F4 and a relatively low SS to allow in as much light as possible, hense only the head is sharp.
I quite like the sky colour too especially with the leopard colour - and it's a very nice pose and stare into the night back along the branch. Mmmmm...I wish for an opportunity like that! I like the eyes I love the texture in the bark too, but I wonder how it would look if you sacrificing that texture for more of the leopard in focus - maybe not practical given the position of the leopard. You've already explained why the head had to be where it is. It's really fine as it is, but maybe for me personally a bit too much of what I'm looking at in the frame is out of focus. Just wondering about alternatives as you probably have a number of shots. And, purely out of interest, why only ISO 250?
I happily stand corrected! The perspective really fooled me - it looks like the foot is on this side of the tree trunk and so in front of the head. Ah well!
Leopard Cub
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