This day I caught some of the best images of our lion at the COlumbus ZOo. The right light, the right distance for not only my lens to be used at its peak sharpness but also the right distance to make the bars invisible, the right poses and looks and my kids were behaving. Tigers tend to be more my thing but this is by far my favorite zoo animal image to date.
This is cropped from a larger image, tonemapped in Photomatix, a variety of tools and layers including - levels, hue/sat, selective color, high pass, NI, gradient map, radial gradient, gaussian blur, plenty of dodging and burning. I utilized cloning to balance out his mane - the left side was a little light so I cloned it a bit bigger. Resize, USM and border. I do believe that this would pass advanced edit muster, no real expert editing techniques that I can think of. Glad that this utilizes the 720pixel/200kb max. And I must say that this even rocks in thumbnail.
My wife forecasts at least a low 7. I think it should do that well too. Which means I will end up with a high 5 or very low 6.
Post Challenge - Top 10 in a Free Study - whooh hooh! I had really hoped to hang on to the 7. Kept blipping back and forth the last day or two. Whatcha gonna do. Thanks to everyone for the massive view count in challenge.
Statistics
Place: 10 out of 573 Avg (all users): 6.9405 Avg (commenters): 8.3333 Avg (participants): 6.8016 Avg (non-participants): 7.2373 Views since voting: 20554 Views during voting: 475 Votes: 185 Comments: 40 Favorites: 18 (view)
Tim - I don't know how I haven't seen this before - Magnificent picture !!
You see this is the reason that I go surfing through other peoples favourite shots - it turns up all sorts of things that they've noticed and I haven't :- )
Excellent Job, I thought maybe this was you. OK now we have to talk because I have been here and not only are there bars but there is a screen. I have been wondering how you get around the screen as well. Keep up the excellent work. I think us Ohioians need to organize a DPC Ohio get together sometime. Seems I keep finding more of us here.
Wow! This is so incredible! Lion pictures when done right are the most beautiful photograph possible! And of course this one is done better than right! Congratulations on such an awesome placing in this amazing challenge.
Majestic! The Lion of the tribe of Judah shall break every chain!
Go Tim! This is superb and a worthy top 10 or better. WOW! adding to faves now. I didn't get to vote on all the images, so I am glad you got to be top 10. I would have given this a 10...would it be enough to get you over 7??? who knows! it's too late for maths
I said, "Bravo" before and I repeat. Actually not to steal any of your thunder, but perhaps he is the papa of my lion adolescent who so dutifully gave me the stare down too! I couldn't help but think of the similar look.
What a striking image! When I clicked the critique button and this appeared on my screen, my first thought was "wow... definitely a top 10." Then I scrolled down and saw I was right.
I really like the way this image fades to black around the perimiter. The relatively shallow DoF, with focus on the face, help keep the viewer focused on the image as well. These combined with the lion's intense stare make this photo absolutely captivating. I'm actually not bothered by the fact that the focus is on the nose and whiskers rather than the eyes, but I wonder if I'd feel there were something "extra" there if the focus were on the eyes as well.
Congratulations on an excellent image, and a well-deserved top 10 finish in a very competitive field.
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
I really, really like this. I'd LOVE it if his eyes were sharp. Looks like the focal point fell on the nose. Nice job of PP on this. Good luck in the challenge.
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