Don't leave your world to the strong!

"Don't leave your world to the strong!"

www.aktion-tu-was.de
An initiative for crime prevention of the police and the Federal Ministry

Huge making-of after the break...

Lion 03/28/08
by Michael Poliza
Hyena 02/28/08
by Thom Hogan
(hyaenidae.org)
Cheetah 03/10/08
by Richard Stead
Sky by Luke Gamson

Special thanks to all the great people who's additional photos i used
A must-read: African carnivores under threat
(ya i know. once again. but now it's definitly finished.whoopie!)

----------------------------------------------------------------3/28/08

The Last Lion
The Last Hyena

The Last Cheetah

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself,
"What if I had never seen this before?
What if I knew I would never see it again?"
- Rachel Carson -

--------------------------------------------------------4/10/08

For the process of the image check the post below. all i did the last 3 hours was merging hyenas and trying to make them fit. at the end, when i wanted to make the image ready for my blogger, i hid the pack and the couple and well...it just looked way better. expect a proper series on this
(yeah finally an image with my beloved hyenas!)

the one with the whole pack
The Base

this time i was quite quicker (3-4 hours!?). mainly because i knew where i was heading, and also because i did not have to do so much cleaning up the image (last time i exchanged the posters, what took quite long)
this is what photomatix made out of my shots. i was about an hour at the location and did only two different spots, so i'm quite happy for a result like this with this minimum of effort.
(as usual with a fake backdrop....background...right... see it here)

------------------------------------------------------------------3/6/08

A Skylit Drive

A Skylit Walk

A Skylit Rail
--------------------------------------------------------------1/31/08

Welcome to a new session of post-production. After a long time i once again had a HDR at my hands - can be the first time i made one on purpose and not just for training.

Final Image
I knew, that the over-burnt lights looked kinda crappy and i just did not think of the one and onyl possibility to get rid of this flaw. But not only that, the last step (yes it truely was jsut one) improved the whole image (if you ignore the increased pixel noise ;)). Cheers, i now stop working on this image :)

Nearlly Final Image
(Second) Last step has been what i call the "manual micro contrast". it's nothing more than taking care of details and the weight of every part of the image. i do this with simple d&b, but as simple as this sounds it is the most time-taking process. I reckon it being not less than 5 hours just painting, playing with levels and selective color and trying to get every sick detail :)

Composition of Content
At this stage i cleaned the image, deleted blemishes, trash and other irritating garbage, put in blank posters (sick task, considering that Photoshop crashed the first time and i had to re-do most of it. but it had the benefit, that i changed the process and it even looked better the 2nd time) and added a proper sky. Took me some 3 hours, too. Source: Dawn Clouds by George

HDR, Perspective & Clipping
I never used the "Perspective Correction" Command before but this is one hell of a new friend to me. The original image was pretty distorted and this tool just saved me a lot of work. The HDR has been done with Photomatix.

The Basic Shot(s)
Januarey 20, 2008: We went to this spot i always wanted to do soemthing with, to shoot a HDR for Danilo's new try on another barfin-Ad. So after we shot a few HDRs for him (we actually did lots, but most were screwed), i took the time for my very own one. Long time exposure has been some heck of a annoyance, as everytime the low and mid were shot, lotsa cars passed by and killed the shot. I still left some trails (bottom right) in my image, but they are just irrelevant.

Thats from me. Hope you liked it :)