Amur Leopard
updated: Jan 30, 2013, 9:23 AM

By Ron Harris

I took this photo of an Amur Leopard on January 19th at the Santa Barbara Zoo. It is said that there is only about 25 existing in the wild. Their only habitat is in the undeveloped Russian Far East region of Primorye. I always enjoy looking at this beautiful animal, particularly when it is active.

A brief word about my photography. I was a B&W darkroom photographer for many years. I attended an Ansel Adams workshop and mostly follow his methods. I photograph with a digital SLR and do digital darkroom using Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Lightroom 4. Adams said that he considered the image on his film as the score (He was a pianist.) and the print as his performance. None of his images were straight prints, and were created using dodging, burning, variable contrast, and other techniques in the darkroom. I use these same ideas using Photoshop and Lightroom.

I also shoot in RAW, which means the camera computer chips are not adjusting contrast, dynamic range, color balance, etc., as is done when shooting JPEG images, such as those that are taken by most point- and-shoot cameras.

For the image of the Leopard I converted to B&W and made image adjustments affecting the elements listed above and I adjusted the lighting to my liking. But, I did not change his spots ! I tried to capture the essence of this beautiful cat. I hope you like it.

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