Young tiger, Bandhavgarh, India

[davidedric]

I've gone back to some of my old slides to see what kind of digital images I can produce with PP. C&C welcome


This was an adolescent tiger trying to look tough (mum was just nearby). I was on an elephant at the time!

[HMW12]

Awesome capture- Love how his colouring blends into the background. You can imagine him springing out of nowhere to take down his prey. I love big cats - and dream of being able to see one in the wild. This scanned really well - any special tips for scanning slides? What resolution do you set for the scanner? I've only tried this a couple of times and have not been really happy with the results. Thanks for sharing this

[ggt]

Dave, I love the expression in this young tiger's face! You caught him a classic "I'm a tough guy" slink. I notice his whisker areas are in focus, but his "sideburns" are not. Yet the fur on parts of his legs which seem to be further away from the camera than his sideburns are more in focus than they are. And the leaves to the right are pristine.

As a newbie, trying to master the art of photographing her dogs, I've noticed this happens for me too. Why? If anyone can explain, I'd love to know.

Dave, it also looks as though you were on about the same level as the tiger, yet you said you were on an elephant. Was he on a hill? How far away were you? And, you can't really tell with the pic this size, his eyes are not badly presented. I'm a photoshop addict. A cropped close-up of his face, painted in "white dots" on his eyes and some filters to dramatize his expression could be very nice .

My last name is Tiger, so I have a special appreciate for this shot!

Thanks for sharing.
Gretchen

[Markvetnz]

Fabulous image. Lovely composition and nice natural colours. The lack of focus on the "sideburns" is simply a narrow DOF. It works really well in this image. I envy you seeing a tiger in the wild. I've seen lion, leopard and cheetah in the wild.

[davidedric]

Thanks for your kind comments.

To answer a couple of questions. The elephant was in a small gully, and the tigers (this one and his mum) were pretty much level with us, so I could get some unusual shots. I can't recall how far away they were, but I think not more than 50 metres (you can't get too close in case the elephant gets spooked). I think I was shooting at the long end of a 100-300mm zoom (pity there's no EXIF on a slide) (probably on Ektachrome 200), and I've not cropped much away, so it would be possible to work it out with a guess at how big the beast was.

It was scanned using a Nikon Coolscan 5000 (rather expensive bit of kit) at around 5,500 by 3,500 pixels on the slide.

I think this is my favourite image of the set, but I've got a few more that might be worth sharing some time.

P.S. For any fellow geeks, the word jungle, from the Sanskrit jangala, originally meant this kind of dry mixed grass and woodland, rather than the tropical rain forest it now describes.