lioness C&C

[Kimba]

Any advice or comments greatly appreciated.
taken with my Canon 500D
iso 200 50mm F/5.0 1/400

They seem slightly off focus but these were taken through thick dirty glass.

#2

 

[TJ K]

Ya the dirty glass that protects us from them haha may be the issue. They don't seem very clear but what can you do in those conditions. Maybe if there is something where it's outside and you can shoot without glass in the way. Not to bad overall.

 

[chammer]

yea, i agree about the glass but even still im loving the second one. those eyes are just stunning, and very piercing.

 

[Overread]

The lighting looks tricky where you were, the main presented image of hte cat being in shadow, whilst getting strong highlights of the sun on the otherside of the cats face. This is never easy to expose for since unless you can either boost the shadowed side lighting (a reflector or flash) or reduce the sunlight (a diffuser between sun and cat) then your going to get blown highlights and/or very dark shadows.

Also whilst the zooglass has had a softening effect on the shots, with some sharpening via the unsharpen tool you can pull more sharpness out of the shots. If you do this early on on teh fullsized version and then again sharpen the resized image for the net , then you sould get improved sharpness overall.
I did a little edit below - only done in photoshop elements 6 with a layermask addon

Creat new layer, a duplicate of the original shot.
Then on the new layer perform:
Enhance - adjust lighting - shadows and highlights
lighten shadows - 13%
Darken highlights - 8%
Midtone contrast - 0%


Enhance Unsharpen mask
Amount - 90%
Radius - 0.8 pixels
Threshold - 3 levels

Burn tool
Opacity - 7%
Applied on all the brigthest hotspots on the shot, sometimes brushing over a few times depending on the intensity of the hotspot. Note that if a mouse click is used for each new layer of the effect then the undo command can be used to take a step back if needed.

Also use the layer masking tool to remove the effect from the dark background areas, leaving the foreground and cat affected.

Quick selection wand also used to select the main area of the cats eye; then the edge being set to feather (right click whilst having the quick selection wand tool in use and in the popup menu go down to feather- set to 5 pixels). Then a brightness layer was opened and set to +22% brightness to bring the eye out more on the shot.

 

[Kimba]

thanks all, great tips Overread!! will give it a go. My dream is to do a tour of africa and get some wild cat shots but by the time i get enough money to get over there poachers will have killed them all

 

[Plato]

Any advice or comments greatly appreciated.
taken with my Canon 500D
iso 200 50mm F/5.0 1/400

They seem slightly off focus but these were taken through thick dirty glass.

#2

I can appreciate the problem. I took some shots of a lion last year. No glass but the zoo ensured that the lions were a substantial distance from the spectators. I got some good shots but it was necessary to crop much more than is really appropriate. I guess that they're trying to tell us that we're supposed to be scared of the lions. (I'm not scared - I'm absolutely petrified.)

 

[lvcrtrs]

Here's my go at pp using PSE7

Increase contrast (15?)
Lighten shadows 15
Unsharp mask 50 plus eyes an additional 40
Despeckle Background
Clone hot spots on ear (couldn't get darken highlights or burn to do the trick)

 

[Kimba]

Nice job Ivcrtrs, looks great. Plato, as for being scared, there is a zoo close to me that for the right price will let me into the Tiger enclosure and i can take photo's and pat them, i am saving as we speak, i'm not scared at all, it would be a dream as big cats are just spectacular, mind you i would be one of those people who get eaten!!

 

[beni_hung]

I know opportunities don't always present themselves, but if they did it would be nice to see the whole head of the lion. The rock is very distracting. Though, if the opportunity wasn't there then maybe cropping could help. Just my 2 cents.