White Lion

I'm curious what you guys think of this.

I like to play around with motion blurs with some of my wildlife subjects, usually only after I feel I've maximized my "non blurry" photo ops . In this case we were following this lioness as she left the Sand River to head back toward a carcass or perhaps her pride (we eventually lost her). Since "lioness walking through grass" wasn't terribly interesting, I altered my settings and fired off a shot or two at a slower shutter speed.

I was pretty pleased with the way the photo turned out at first glance. Her face was relatively sharp and there were just enough distinct contours of the lion in profile to make it stand out from the background.

However, I didn't actually get around to processing it until just now, ten months later. Having picked up the Nik collection for cheap, I've been experimenting more with black and white conversions in Silver Efex Pro. I felt a monochrome look might help emphasize the contours and blurred patterns even more. This was one of the pre-set high key filters, with some slight adjustments and a bit of dodging added along the top to make the tree line blend in more with the grass.

Yay or nay?

Max