Tiger Lessons in Dominance

[laurie golden]

These 18 month old tigers were play?-fighting in the water but way to far away for a good photo and the background and foreground was mostly a very ugly bank of dirt and rocks. I replaced the rocks and dirt (and their shadows on the water around the tigers), cropped a lot and used Topaz Clean for the finishing touch. After many attempts, I think this is the best I can do. I lost some splash which I regret and at the last minute feared that it is to dark so I lightened it.

Original taken with Nikon D3S, 500mm f4 plus 1.4 converter, f8, ISO 800,1/640 sec, Manual Exposure.

[Jay Sheinfield]

Laurie, this is great. The pan works! Love the energy and action in the photo................what a great moment to capture. The Clean treatment enhances the tiger markings so well. Whatever you did to the background/foreground, it worked out well.........Excellent.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Laurie, I love this! I love the composition and the Topaz filtering and the pano and framing (in fact, everything)

[Maureen Allen]

Wonderful action image, Laurie. The pano presentation is perfect.

[John Storjohann]

Strong...very strong...image...print it, matte it, frame it and hang it on the wall. Well seen, well captured, and beautifully processed...wow.

[denise ippolito]

Awesome action captured!! Love the processing and the end result! Great job!

[Andrew McLachlan]

Quite lovely Laurie. Love the action and the treatment too!

[Mitch Carucci]

Laurie,

What a wonderful photo!

M.

[Nancy Bell]

Great idea on the processing. You properly put the emphasis on the awesome action and removed all else. I really like how the Topaz clean looks on the tigers and the splashing water. (I may try that on some of my tiger images!) I wonder how just a bit more saturation & a tiny bit more brightening might look.

[laurie golden]

Nancy,

If you got photos like we did at Tadoba - far way and bad background and foreground you have to do an out of the box application to make something of it. I have reprocessed this photo serveral times since this version to add more of the splash that I deleted in masking and more contrast. The four tigers kept playing in the water for a long time and I just loved the photos and had to do something with a few of them.