I took this shot of a leopard leaping from one branch to another in Botswana in 2013. The original sky had pastel early evening color, but because of the contrast with the much darker foreground elements and the relatively limited dynamic range of digital sensors, the sky was blown out in the photograph. So, I took a separate picture of the sky with the correct exposure and then composited that back into the shot. I simply used Edit > paste to lay the sunset sky over the leopard image and then choose the blend mode 'darken'. That worked beautifully -- I was even able to retain detail in the cat's whiskers. Finally, I brought the image back into ACR and moved the shadows slider to the right. This brought back a little detail in the leopard's markings because the original high contrast picture showed only a black silhouette. This is the main reason to shoot in RAW mode -- the ability to bring back detail in the highlights and the shadows that you could see with your eyes. My settings for the action shot were 1/1000, f/16, and 320 ISO. I used a Canon 500mm f/4 telephoto plus a 2x teleconverter, giving me 1000mm of focal length.
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