First Posted Pic

[robboh]

Be slightly gentle but honest

[MCWB]

Foreground and subject are great, bokeh is a bit distracting though! Try blurring it more perhaps?

[stubbsy]

Robboh

I thought exactly the same as Trent - the boke is distracting (NOT your fault - blame the lens) but the pic is great. Much better than my first picture post

The composition works really well and the focus is tack sharp.

I'd probably clone out the ear that's growing out of kitty's back though

Keep up the good work. Are there more from here?

[big pix]

Great shot ...... but a little bit of a straighten up would also be good.......

cheers
bp

[robboh]

Hey, thanks guys.

Agreed about the bokeh and the 'extra ear'

The original was a bit soft so has been PP'd a bit and by that stage I had had enough so the ear and background got left alone (I dont really enjoy PP very much as Im not overly good at it and find it quite frustrating).
Also had a look at straightening it but the log looked a bit weird to me (plus she was reclining on a bit of a slope).

EXIF data:
80-200 @ 200, 2x TC
1/160s @ f3.2
ISO 200

[marcus]

A great 1st post!

Only thing that annoys me is that extra ear you mentioned.

OK ............. Stubbsy VS MCWB is it boke or bokeh?

[mic]

Thats an Ear Backed Cat very rare
Very nice 1st post indeed.

Mic.
Watch out Kerry

[stubbsy]

...OK ............. Stubbsy VS MCWB is it boke or bokeh?

Well Marcus - have a look here

Both are spellings in current use - mine is just more correct despite being less commonly used.

[sirhc55]

If my first post had been as good as this I would have been very proud indeed - well done

[robboh]

Ok, Ok! I'll do some more work on it! I'll g-blur the background a bit and turn her into a proper lioness rather than a sawtooth-backed cat

Mic, I dont think Kerry has too much to worry about from me

Stubbsy, here are a couple more from the same day that I have access to from work. Basically straight out of the camera with a bit of sharpening. Plus, IIRC, the lioness is basically a 50% crop of a landscape pic. These ones are a bit bigger (~500k).

Lemur
Lioness

The lioness in this one was the one that the 'ear' belonged to. She moved

[ozimax]

Great shot, definitely depth of field / blurring background etc would have better effect but well composed shot with natural frame of tree limbs, may look even better without border at all?

Max

[KerryPierce]

Very cool shot, Rob.

For a full critique, I'll add to what the others have said. The shot looks to be about -.3 to -.6EV underexposed on the important parts. The sidelighting is the problem and the right side of the cat looks about right. I'd brighten up the face, ears and other shadow areas a tad, doing double brighten on the cat's eyes with a selection of just the eyes.

Cloning the ear out of the background would be easy stuff, if you fix the background first. It's easy to fix because there's not a lot of it. Select the OOF areas with a slight feather and apply a decent gaussian blur. That should fix your broken bokeh.

Then select, with a slight to medium feather, a square area, just to the right of the ear on the back, making sure that you catch a little of the cat's back. Promote the selection to a layer, twice, and then move one over to cover the ear and the other to cover the white circle. Erase any of the promoted selections that don't fit properly. Then flatten.

Here's a quickie to demo what I mean. The differences are rather subtle, but effective, I think.

[stubbsy]

Stubbsy, here are a couple more from the same day that I have access to from work. Basically straight out of the camera with a bit of sharpening. Plus, IIRC, the lioness is basically a 50% crop of a landscape pic. These ones are a bit bigger (~500k).

Lemur
Lioness

The lioness in this one was the one that the 'ear' belonged to. She moved

The Lemur is good - better when cropped when you PP. Shame about the tree branch in the lioness shot as the expression on her face is great.

Thanks for sharing the pics & keep up the good work. PS If it helps any I don't really undersatnd everything Kerry says either and I've been PPing in Photoshop for a while

[mic]

Kerry is our Master Yoda we are but young Jedi Knights in training

Mic Siph

[robboh]

Thanks for all the comments and help guys! Appreciated!!

Kerry. Thank you for the tips. How do you normally do your selections, with the pen tool, or the magic lasso?? I'll have a go at making these changes on the original and then repost for critique.

Mic. Only two there ever are, a master and apprentice

[mudder]

G'day Rob,
I'm a sucker for any animal shots and this is bloody great! Wow, the first posts are getting really good these days Strewth, miine would have been a shocker

It's a bit tricky trying to get the best exposure when there's "hot spots" of white fur on animals under side lighting but I think you've done great with this...

Aren't Lemur's full of character? They're terrific subjects...

Looking forward to more of these...

[robboh]

Andrew,

Thanks for the kinds words.

The original pic isn't particularly good technically and got saved by RAW and PP really.

I do have to admit that Im a sucker for animal shots as well
As for the Lemur's, I love photographing them. They would have to be my favourite subject, though as you say, quite frustrating to photograph. They are as mad as hatters and very fast. They have high contrast colouring and so its VERY easy to blow out the fur around their faces. But that all makes for good practise

Rob.

[marcus]

Robbo, I have previously commented on your great 1st shot but should'nt it be a sheep?
Stubbsy.....Yeah popular opinion obviously states that you beat MCWB.
All the way with Bokeh!!

[KerryPierce]

 PS If it helps any I don't really undersatnd everything Kerry says either and I've been PPing in Photoshop for a while

I don't mean to be obtuse, obscene or obliterated when I talk about this stuff. Anytime I say something that doesn't make sense or you want more info, please ask. I try not to be condescending or overly techie, but it's a hard row to hoe when trying to explain this stuff. I don't get offended, so don't hold back on that account.

[KerryPierce]

Kerry is our Master Yoda we are but young Jedi Knights in training

Mic Siph

Wow, Mic. I'm certainly no master at any part of this game. When you take enough bad images, even the slowest thought process is bound to pick up some tricks along the way.

[KerryPierce]

Kerry. Thank you for the tips. How do you normally do your selections, with the pen tool, or the magic lasso??

You're welcome, Rob. The image will dictate the type of selection used. For example, large detailed, areas of high contrast can be quickly selected with the magic lasso and then fine tuned with the pen tool. Other areas can be quickly roughed out with the pen tool, before fine tuning.

I frequently combine the use of both tools. For this image, the areas to be selected are small, so I used the pen tool with a 2 or 3 feather, IIRC, for the background OOF areas. I then applied a gaussian blur of 1.5.

I used the pen tool to make a rough rectangular selection, just to the right of the ear on the back. The rectangle was slightly larger than the ear, with a feather of about 4 or 5.

If I'm not making it easy for you to follow, please say so and I'll give it another go, with step by step examples. The stuff isn't hard to do, but it is frequently hard to visualize from brief written instructions.

[robboh]

Robbo, I have previously commented on your great 1st shot but should'nt it be a sheep?

EDIT: On reflection, the joke I posted in here wasnt particularly tasteful and might have been taken the wrong way. It was intended as a good-natured response to the good-natured dig above.
Apologies to anyone who might have been offended.

Rob.