Tiger hiding behind bush

[Sabyasachi Patra]

• Canon EOS 10D
• 300.0 mm
• ƒ/4
• 300mm
• 1/60s
• ISO 100
• Sabyasachi Patra
• Mon, 08 May 2006 9:08 AM
• © Sabyasachi Patra/www.indiawilds.com
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

I had photographed this tiger from the top of an elephant. The tiger was hiding behind a thick bamboo forest and looking at me.

Canon EOS 10D, EF 300mm F4 L IS USM lens at ISO 100, F4, 1/60 seconds handheld, Raw. Processed in Lightroom.

 

[D. Robert Franz]

Wow that's close to a tiger, elephant or not being this close might cause me to sweat. You had a tought situation to work with but you did the best you could. I might have shot the camera in the vertical format.. A radical suggestion might be to crop in tightly on the eyes in a pano format.

 

[Axel Hildebrandt]

A tiger looking at me like this would have made me feel like an item on the menu. Do you often get to see wild tigers? Great you were able to photograph him and agree to experiment with different crops.

 

[Fabs Forns]

• © Sabyasachi Patra/www.indiawilds.com

To me, this is about the eyes, so I tried a quick version, consider that this is down sloppy in a small jpg It can be done quite successfully in the big file, more pixels to acquire.

I reconstructed the head a bit using quick mask, you can also use the patch tool to preserve the texture, clone stamp will not do this.
Cropped to my taste and added Vignette blurring and Brilliance/warmth at a low opacity in Nik Color Effex 3.0
Hope you don't mind, but those eyes.....

 

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Thanks for all the feedback. I am a technology challenged person (though I am an engineer & MBA in qualification and currently head the Government relations of Nokia in Chennai/India). I just convert the RAW files using basic colour corrections, fill light, highlights, contrast etc using Lightroom. The vertical crop looks nice. The picture I had uploaded was an uncropped version. I was lying in my folders. Stumbled upon it when I was examining my files afresh through lightroom.

I have been photographing tigers and studying them for a number of years and contributing my pictures to help in conservation. I was forced to upgrade my equipment 1D Mark II and a 400 F2.8 IS as most of the time the interesting behaviour used to occur in early morning or late evenings. In 2007, four of my tiger shots reached the semifinals of the Shell wildlife photograher of the year competition. I hope the tips from experts here like you will help me in moving beyond the semis. Thanks for the tips. Please keep the tips flowing.

 

[Gautam Biswas]

Dear Sabyasachi, In which park was this image made. I recently visited Bandhavgarh National Park in December 07. I had 4 sightings of this impressive predator, once from the jeep and thrice from the elephant back. This was my first encounter with the tiger in the wild, and I can tell you I am already addicted with this magnificient creature. hope to visit many more times to create better images. I too had this challenge of having to make the image through the grass and shrubs.