motif: Cheetah portrait

Nice shot Cindy, lots of spots for the motif.. Like the raised paw and implied sense of motion. Also agree about the eyes. Anyone know if a little catchlight can be realistically added in PS? Thanks for the post Cindy.. these big cats are terrific!

I like this one a lot - its very tight which i like on larger mammals.

NIce close-up Cindy. I did not realize until I got my shots back from this trip, how much fill flash would have helped the cheetahs. The raised paw is a nice touch and I agree that I think this is Queen.

What an intense stare. What prey do you think she was interested in?

Dennis Olivero wrote:Anyone know if a little catchlight can be realistically added in PS?

Yup...it can be done. I've done it myself as an experiment but never in a photo I've posted due to some misguided sense of ethics but I know a photographer who does it with regularity.

Love the raised paw, tight composition, and the look right at you. Fill flash likely would have put a bit of sparkle in the eye.

Dennis, the answer to your question is yes but only under very specific circumstances if you want it to look absolutely realistic. I've played around with the idea a lot - never posted anything with one and unlikely ever will. You need a situation with a plausible catchlight, and here the left eye (right side facing us) is the only candidate. You need to have a case where adding a catchlight doesn't conflict with the light on the rest of the face. What I've then done, is to find a similar situation with a catchlight but maybe not as good a pose or composition or not quite sharp or even taken at an entirely different time. I've not been successful in copying the catchlight from one shot to another - you just need too many things lined up correctly to make it work. (I typically work with a zoom and the distance to subject and focal length never quite match; I was trying with a lion where my flash hadn't recharged enough to fire.) Instead, I've taken the pattern of light and tried to match that where I want the catchlight. Typically I do this at magnification of 400% on a pixel-by-pixel approach. I've only tried on the original file size - before reducing the size and sharpening. It might be a reasonable experiment to try the same approach after sharpening. (Obviously, the way I've done it is very time intensive!)

Rich

Actually the talk about the catchlight added here fascinated me and as a quick experiment I added an Iris which was neede and the catchlight This was done very quicklybut with practice a good practioner of PS or any image editing program should do this with relative ease.

Big paw for such a delicate Cat!!!, I like the image as well!!!
Lovely animal well captured!!! Congrats!!!