Sweet face

There is not much in this world sweeter than the face of a baby cheetah. I captured this shot with a 500mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter in Kenya with the long lens resting on a beanbag. There were a few offending out of focus grasses cutting across the cub's face, and I used the content aware feature in Photoshop plus the clone tool to eliminate the distracting elements. I also lightened the cheetah's eyes by about 15% with the dodge tool. That subtle change made a huge difference in visual and emotional impact. My settings for this shot were 1/640, f/8, and 800 ISO. I was very happy with the diffused light. It allows us to see and appreciate all of the beautiful detail in the fur. Notice the catchlight in the eyes. It's natural. Some photographers believe that fill flash should be used to put a catchlight in the eyes of an animal if one is missing, but it looks so unnatural. A dot of light from a flash never successfully replaces a natural looking catchlight.