Leopard and HDR

[botspur]

At last, after years and years, a Leopard up a tree. Because of the backlight I decided to try HDR with the subject. I set my D90 to bracket and took three exposures -2 0 +2, fortunately the leopard remained in the same position as I was hand holding the camera. In PP I used Lightroom 5 and PhotomatixPro for the HDR. I was pleasantly surprised with the HDR result, mainly at how subtle it is and not the in your face images associated with HDR.
Any feedback will be appreciated.

[purplehaze]

Good on you for bracketing, Clive. A habit I need to acquire. Great capture. My only criticism is the framing. I can understand you wanted to get the whole length of the animal in, but his head is kind of lost in the upper LH corner and I find my eye drawn more to that awesomely powerful looking rear leg. Is this the original framing? If you have no other crop options, I wonder if you could do something to draw more attention to his face?

[botspur]

Hi Janis, thank you for the comments. There is a lot of room to play with and I can crop, a good point about the back leg.

[Stagecoach]

Good capture Clive, I like his stare.

Janis makes an interesting observation but I wonder if increasing the room above and to the left is going to lose some of his significance in the frame. The problem with having such a magnificent long tail

[IzzieK]

Love it Clive -- as usual you got a good grasps of your subject. Very tantalizing...but I find it too much on the yellow side. In HDR can this be lessened a little bit...? Just asking as I have not done HDR at all.

[Shadowman]

Nice capture.

[bambleweeney]

Clive
Hand held HDR with an animal as the subject - impressive (it's not stuffed is it ? ). A very nice shot but I kind of agree about the framing. A little more space to the left would be nice and as Izzie mentioned it is just a little on the yellow side. HDR often adds too much warmth to an image. Don't know if you can control the colour temperature in Photomatix otherwise maybe the careful addition of a blue filter in Photoshop or one of the other methods for removing a colour cast should do the trick.
Lovely animal though.

[bnnrcn]

Nice shot Clive How close were you while shooting? He is staring

[Manfred M]

A very nice shot, but I'm fairly certain I don't like the outcome of the HDRI process. The whole image just looks way oversaturated to me. Try dialing back the saturation a fair bit, for example.

[kdoc856]

Really nice image. Manfred's adjustment is a significant improvement. I've noticed that very often in both LR and Photomatix, that I get too much yellow when I turn up the vibrance. I've had good results either selectively reducing the yellow saturation, or nudging down the saturation before turning up the vibrance.

[botspur]

Thank you everyone for the very informative comments just what I was hoping for. I agree on the yellow tinge and saturation, and will work on that, there are several default settings in Photomatix that can be used as a starting point. And also on the framing as there is a lot to play with. I was more interested in the HDR feel of the picture for starters. I was about 15-20 metres away and spent about 15 minutes before he moved away, this was around 1100hrs. Most of the time his head was down catnapping, typical cat.

[JohnRostron]

Excellent image. I don't think it needs a crop, and I am not convinced by the PP adjustments.

[bnnrcn]

15-20 metres away from a leopard ?

Thank you everyone for the very informative comments just what I was hoping for. I agree on the yellow tinge and saturation, and will work on that, there are several default settings in Photomatix that can be used as a starting point. And also on the framing as there is a lot to play with. I was more interested in the HDR feel of the picture for starters. I was about 15-20 metres away and spent about 15 minutes before he moved away, this was around 1100hrs. Most of the time his head was down catnapping, typical cat.

[Nicks Pics]

Congrats on your awaited wildlife sighting! I wouldn't have thought there would be a need for HDR here, but that's interesting that you were able to do it. I do think Manfred's edition of the color cast does look a bit more natural, but I often have that issue with light tan objects. It seems that camera/ software cannot handle that color very well. Increasing vibrance makes it look yellow, but as seen above, when it has the proper color cast it looks dull. A tricky color to work with.

[dragon76]

Hi Clive, what WB were you on? IMO, Photomatix is one of the best HDR software. Just don't go for their suggested stylize/ presets. A bit of selective sharpening on the leopard in LR would bring less attention to the tree and more to the Leopard. Even if you shot this on a tripod, I bet the tree would always be sharper than the Leopard. Cheers Dean

[botspur]

Hi Nick, thanks for the comments. I have another Leopard picture shot in dappled shade and the image does tend to be too yellow, also I have not spent a lot of time in PP on these images.

Hi Dean, I was shooting with daylight WB. I used the photographic pre-set in Photomatix, as I found the default pre-set a bit flat.

[dragon76]

Hi Dean, I was shooting with daylight WB. I used the photographic pre-set in Photomatix, as I found the default pre-set a bit flat.

Clive, depending on the time of the day, my Nikon daylight WB tends to go too warm and always need to be tweaked in ACR. Yes, default is always flat because it's 32bit merged image but It's one massive file which can contains a whole lot of exposure data and everything is in there. All you need is put it back to LR or PS and work your magic. Cheers Dean