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Image Description
Warm morning light was shining on this cheetah when we were driving past it at sunrise. In the spur of the moment I chose to drive to the other side of him so the warm backlight turned him into a silhouette.
Very nice and atmospheric. Very typical Cheetah pose. You might consider setting a black point to make it even more of a silhouette and desaturating a bit to give it more of an early-morning tenderness.
Hello Jaap, thanks for your comments!
I have to admit I had to look up what ‘setting a black point’ is, because I’m not a happy post-processor
However, I did try it and didn’t see much difference. The blacks in LR went to -3 but maybe I’m doing it wrong.
Anyway, the image is as it came out of the camera and I didn’t do any post processing on it. I tried desaturating the colour but am not convinced myself if that is better. But please do have a go at it and show me what you mean!
Thanks again and have a nice Easter Weekend!
Ingrid.
The problem here, Ingrid, is that the IR light in the tropical sunrise overwhelmed the filter on the sensor, turning the sky yellow. I am sure that it was far more pinkish. It should be possible to correct, but on a small JPG the grass on the right with a small cloud behind it is a real problem. I can show you the general idea in a five-minute edit, but that bit of grass of grass on the right with the cloud behind it needs a lot more, including selecting and inverting the grass. Now there are bits that I didn’t manage to select. I would need a large raw file and even then it would take some doing.
An alternative might be to work on a blending layer in L* A* B* and split the sliders, but I did not try that.
For that reason I always keep a B+W 486 filter on my lenses in the tropics - it avoids a lot of Photoshop grief.
I also removed the haloing around the Cheetah and in the grass around it and intensified the black of the silhouette. But I confess it was a quick-and-dirty job to show what I meant.
Thanks for the efforts you’ve been through with the editing of and feedback on this photo.
I would certainly try a UV-/IR-Cut filter but to my knowledge (correct me if I’m wrong!) they don’t exist as a drop-in filter.
The colour of the sky in your edit is not like what the actual situation was. In fact I would have to go back in time to double check the right colours of the sky - normally in the field I manually change the white balance to whatever the correct colours are for the light conditions at the time. As this was a spur of the moment decision, I didn’t change the white balance from the photos I’d taken just before the silhouette ones. But it will be interesting to see - next time I have a similar situation - what I can do with white balance. As Photoshop grief is not what I’m looking for in life
I do have a couple of series 486 filters by B+W And Heliopan also has IR Sperr filters in their catalog and also offer series filters. Foto Huppert should know. I am quite allergic to the yellow I see in most sunsets Always edit it out. I once had a few lovely Lion shots at noon and had to convert to B&W because the yellow cast from IR was not corrigible
- normally in the field I manually change the white balance to whatever the correct colours are for the light conditions at the time. As this was a spur of the moment decision, I didn’t change the white balance from the photos I’d taken just before the silhouette ones. But it will be interesting to see - next time I have a similar situation - what I can do with white balance. As Photoshop grief is not what I’m looking for in life 
