C&C : Awake, aware, intent...

PJohnP · Dec 8, 2005

A little departure for me of recent photos, this one being taken with a short sojourn at the Denver Zoo last week. I spotted two young snow leopards playing, then briefly alighting for a moment, followed by another swirl of thrashing limbs. The cold weather coupled with the brisk breeze was making these young leopards quite frisky.

And even at rest, one was completely and fully aware of everything around him, including a photographer just out of reach...

D100, 70-200mm AFS/VR, ISO200, f/2.8, 1/320s, processed in NC, cropped and copyright in PS-CS

A note or two on the shooting - as with most zoo shots, this is through a fence, hence the shallow DOF/aperture to lose the fence. Light was mixed shadow, direct sunlight, and side tinted windows.

Critique and comment solicited and welcomed.

Always shoot.

John P.

Frits · Dec 8, 2005

Wow, beautiful shot John. What a majestic and intense animal. I really need to spend some time in a zoo next spring...

Flew · Dec 8, 2005

John,

I think that your title pretty much describes my reaction to the content of the image. Other than that, it looks pretty good on my monitor here, but I'll have to wait until I get home to give it a really good, critical look.

Kevin Scott · Dec 8, 2005

What a beautiful shot of a beautiful animal!

Flew · Dec 8, 2005

John,

OK, I can see them better now. It is a very good shot in every aspect, but I'd probably back off on the sharpening just a tad.

helmet155 · Dec 8, 2005

I studied this image for about 5 minutes...then thought about it for about an hour...then looked again for another minute or two...ok you get the picture...honestly I really like it and would be proud to call it mine if it were.

Flew may be right on the sharpening though

Jim Strathearn · Dec 9, 2005

I like it. (I like the title too... :wink: )

PJohnP · Dec 9, 2005

Flew said:

OK, I can see them better now. It is a very good shot in every aspect, but I'd probably back off on the sharpening just a tad.
Click to expand...

Frank :

Yah, I did the conversions on my laptop while travelling. I find that I tend to sharpen just a bit too much with that laptop screen. I'll play a bit further with this one, I think.

John P.

PJohnP · Dec 9, 2005

Jim Strathearn said:

I like it. (I like the title too... :wink: )
Click to expand...

Jim :

I do try to make the title and prose at least a touch interesting... :Smart:

John P.

MontyDog · Dec 9, 2005

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax;

greyflash · Dec 9, 2005

Beautiful shot of a very intense animal. Love the colors and the shallow DOF and I wouldn't change a thing in that regard. I like sharp pictures and do not see a thing wrong with how you have processed this. If you back off at all don't do it too much, I would just watch the hair in the right ear and decrease the sharpening a tad to see if the stiffness of the hairs softens a little. Excellent capture.

PJohnP · Dec 9, 2005

greyflash said:

Beautiful shot of a very intense animal. Love the colors and the shallow DOF and I wouldn't change a thing in that regard. I like sharp pictures and do not see a thing wrong with how you have processed this. If you back off at all don't do it too much, I would just watch the hair in the right ear and decrease the sharpening a tad to see if the stiffness of the hairs softens a little. Excellent capture.
Click to expand...

Gordon :

Thanks.

You've touched on one of the things I used to judge my sharpening - the hair on the ears. I'll look at it again tonight on my larger monitor at home to decide on this.

John P.

Kevin Scott · Dec 9, 2005

PJohnP said:

Gordon :

Thanks.

You've touched on one of the things I used to judge my sharpening - the hair on the ears. I'll look at it again tonight on my larger monitor at home to decide on this.

John P.
Click to expand...

Forgive me for saying this if already known but maybe others could benefit. Sometimes what I find useful is to copy the layer and apply sharpening to that layer. Then apply a black-filled mask and selectively brush in with white only those areas I specifically want sharpened. I've found that in certain out of focus areas, this method works better than sharpening the entire image. This, of course, is using Photoshop.

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C&C : Awake, aware, intent...

PJohnP

Frits

Flew

Kevin Scott

Flew

helmet155

Jim Strathearn

PJohnP

PJohnP

MontyDog

greyflash Subscribing Member

PJohnP

Kevin Scott