This is Zhen Zhen. She is a 17 month old giant panda cub at the San Diego Zoo. Luckily, they don't move very fast, because it was getting dark, and I was shooting handheld at 200mm, while the zoo people were yelling at me to keep the line moving. I was just happy that I had 3 shots that were in focus.
Post processing...
* Convert from raw (mostly brighten the dark areas)
* NeatImage
* Gaussian blur on the background fencing
* Clone out some dirt on her head
* Sharpen
* Contrast mask the shadows (curves layer in screen mode with the dark areas selected, 20% opacity)
* Sharpen the eyes and nose
* resize
* sharpen
* SFW
Statistics
Place: 17 out of 106 Avg (all users): 6.2281 Avg (commenters): 8.1111 Avg (participants): 5.7708 Avg (non-participants): 6.4065 Views since voting: 1508 Views during voting: 310 Votes: 171 Comments: 12 Favorites: 1 (view)
Oh Ann! This is amazing. We don't have panda's at our zoo for some reason, so they are such a treat for me to see. You did such an amazing job. To me it is Asia at its finest :)
Great shot, Ann. I've seen those pandas many times and they have never posed like this for me. They're usually asleep. Excellent job on post-processing. Congrats on top 20.
This may just be me, but it looks like the edges of the pandas head kind of blend in with the backround. its a good shot though. I like how it is framed, the angle of the bamboo against the rock and the tree branch really makes you focus in on the pandas face.
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