Brothers in arms!

Gallery: WildlifePosted November 6, 2011320 views6 comments

These two male lions were part of a 20-strong pride that included 3 adult males, 6 females and 11 cubs of varying ages. We had seen the pride in fading light on our first safari, and, reasoned that, because of small cubs, they couldn't have travelled far. So, we headed back the next morning to where we had last spotted them. They were just heading towards shade-giving bushes to escape from the harsh sun. If we had been a few minutes late, they would have disappeared into the thickets. This image and others I made that morning were due to correct reasoning and a little luck!
Date: May 2011
Location: Masai Mara, Kenya
Equip: Canon 1D Mlll, Canon 500 f4 with 1.4 TC
Specs: ISO 400, f7.1, 1/250s, beanbag on vehicle

Thank you for taking the time out to look, and for your comments/critiques.

Comments

6 comments

Comment posted by Ken Watkins on November 6, 2011 at 1:17 AM

Ajit,

What a fine pair of Lions, nice to see some great black manes. They seem intnt on someting.

On my monitor I think I can see a slight magenta cast?

Registered on December 15, 2010, 1537 Posts, 4877 Comments

Comment posted by Fabio Giarrizzo on November 6, 2011 at 2:15 AM

Great quality of light and an excellent composition on this image- The almost identical pose and the slightly different definition of the two males give a strong impact to this image- Very well done, Fabio

Registered on December 3, 2010, 90 Posts, 1614 Comments

Comment posted by Vincent Grafhorst on November 6, 2011 at 12:39 PM

Hi Ajit, I had no idea you were this good with the cloning tool and the blur brush

. Just pulling your leg of course. The almost identical poses are remarkable and make this interesting. Ideally there would have been a touch more separation between the two, but that is a minor thing.

Registered on February 24, 2006, 504 Posts, 7203 Comments

Comment posted by Brad Hill on November 7, 2011 at 8:24 AM

Hey Ajit,

Very nicely done - this one is an eye-catcher! My first thoughts on the image were virtually identical to Vincent's so I won't bother repeating him.

Two other things:

1. RE: the magenta cast mentioned by Ken: I thought this might be the case as well (when I viewed the image on my laptop), but when I used my hand-held high-accuracy colour-fidelity and colour-balance checker (AKA my iPad) - no magentas. And, BTW, no joking here - the iPad has both extreme colour accuracy/fidelity and extreme consistency (between copies of the product).

2. While the colour of the image may be close to what you saw in the field and I'm no fan of hyper-saturated images, I think a slight boost in global saturation might make this image really pop (or at least shine more).

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad

Registered on May 29, 2007, 431 Posts, 6061 Comments

Comment posted by Ingrid Vekemans on November 7, 2011 at 2:37 PM

Excellent shot due to the almost identical pose of these two beautiful cats...I do agree that the colours could be made more lively and then the image would be twice as powerful.

Registered on August 2, 2010, 138 Posts, 780 Comments

Comment posted by Morkel Erasmus on November 7, 2011 at 5:03 PM

Fabulous pair here, Ajit! I agree with Brad that some saturation is needed for 'oomph', and I would also propose cropping slightly from the top to eliminate the darker bushes in the BG

Sounds like quite the pride!

Registered on March 22, 2011, 385 Posts, 2068 Comments