The tiger is coughing up a furball. Just a quick snapshot and throw-in, nothing very fancy. I didn't shoot this with the contest in mind, but it seemed to fit :)
Most of the work was in the edit; making a winter-time British zoo shot look like the sahara desert takes a little work. First I selectively desaturated the (damp green) background, and then faded in just a little of the original colour for verisimilitude. I then tweaked the curves to give it an injection of golden desertyness and golden-hour sunshine. I let this bleed a little over into the edges of the tiger's fur, too, as a backlight - hoping that's not too blatant. Cloned out distracting stray hairs, dust and dirt on the tiger, and distracting bright spots on the background. Then a global curves adjustment, dipping the gamma down a little for contrast and raising the blues in both deep shadow and bright highlight, with a dip in the midtones. Then dodging and burning to accentuate details on the fur, more selective curves work to bring out the eyes (perhaps again overdone?), resize, and three level selective sharpen.
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Place: 8 out of 28 Avg (all users): 5.8627 Avg (commenters): 8.0000 Avg (participants): 5.9412 Avg (non-participants): 5.8235 Views since voting: 652 Views during voting: 103 Votes: 51 Comments: 2 Favorites: 0
This is a pretty funny shot. It takes a majestic animal and makes him a little more like a house cat. Great timing.
Sounds like you did a lot of editing on this. It doesn't look overworked, so I think you were successful there. I agree that a damp green background might have been a little overpowering, but its hard to tell without seeing it. I personally think you should have darkened out the background a bit more to make the tiger stand out as the subject a little more. As it is, he and his hairball appear a little to muddled by the background and I don't think they demand enough attention. On first inspection (I try to just give it a real quick once-over before really analyzing it.) I missed the hairball altogether. Not until I read the title did I begin to see the hairball, and then the link to the challenge. That may be at the heart why this didn't score a little higher.
Technically the shot is pretty good, but with any portrait, the key is in the eyes. I know you can't really control the lighting there in the zoo, but I wish the tigers eyes stood out more. Here, instead of the eyes, I find myself looking at the nose. I think that's also why the hairball doesn't stand out. For some reason my eye just stays fixated on the details of the nose.
Anyways, I hope that gives you a little insight at least into what I saw, and some food for thought. Cheers.
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