Gentle Ben

Well not really. Unless you think a grizzly can be gentle. Old Ben was foraging near Roaring Mountain in Yellowstone this spring. He seemed to enjoy frolicking in front of the camera. I was enjoying myself immensely until he decided to cross the road between me and the car. I backtracked some but he got a little too close for comfort. Taken with a Pentax K20D and Sigma 100-300 f/4 + 1.4X TC. C&C always welcome.

Great series, Steve! Focus looks to be crisp, with the first 2 having nice light on its eye (always a big plus in wildlife photography).

In terms of post-processing, the shadows could probably be opened up a bit to reveal a little more detail in all of them, and the 4th shot is a bit dark overall. You might play around with this and see what you think.

Thanks Don. I just got PS CS4 and I've had a little trouble getting the images between my monitor and SmugMug to look the same. I've also noticed some noise in the shadows so I might have underexposed these. Here's another version of that 4th image.

Steve Robinson said:

Thanks Don. I just got PS CS4 and I've had a little trouble getting the images between my monitor and SmugMug to look the same. I've also noticed some noise in the shadows so I might have underexposed these. Here's another version of that 4th image.

Click to expand...

Much improved, Steve. And yeah, when the original is underexposed, you're going to have problems with noise in the shadows when you try to fix it.

Thanks for posting.