© 2013 Thousand Word Images by Dustin Abbott

This is the sixth in a series of images for the week from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. The king of beasts honored me with a handsome pose. My favorite part was when I zoomed into the image (this is about a 100% crop) and discovered the great scar pattern on his nose. It seemed appropriate for this beautiful cat.

Processing technique #6: Creative cropping I am a strong advocate of proper framing in the field. Not having to crop means having more image for something like art prints or stock photography. But when you go to a full frame body, it means that your reach is diminished. The orginal here was at 300mm; the resulting crop is more like 600mm equivalent. I didn’t have the opportunity to frame the way I would like at capture, but the high detail from a full frame sensor and a good lens means that I have tremendous lattitude for cropping. It is a rare photo, however, that cannot be improved through at least a marginal crop in post. I love the crop function in LR (far more than Photoshop) for a few reasons – it is non-destructive (you can always redo/undo the crop). This was not true in Photoshop until CS6. It also gives you crop ratio options, the rule of thirds grid is automatic, and it contains great features like a ruler tool that allows you to draw a line across a horizon for example and have the image automatically rotated to the proper level. My crop here allowed this shot to become more of a portrait and got you, the viewer, close enough to see the battlescars.

Technical info: Canon EOS Canon EF 70-300L, Hoya Circular Polarizer, Processed in Adobe Lightroom 5 Beta and OnOne Perfect Photo Suite

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