Gorgeous bokeh you have going on there !

Lovely shot but could be improved by straightening and maybe cropping away half of the wooden beam.

Non aggressive eh ? Guess you're not a Hitchcock fan then.

Thank you Prieni ! Actually these are not cropped at all - what you see is what there is ! I specifically wanted to try this zoo technique, if the zoo elements interfere with the framing of your shot at all then eliminate them entirely but doing close-ups or abstracts then there is no reference to where the shots were taken. I did this with a zebra and a friend of mine from SA had done the same thing - of course it's impossible to tell one was taken on safari and the other 10 miles from my home !

Thank you for commenting JudithAnne !

LOL @ Don.

Thank you Pentaxophile !

Couldn't agree more Algernon, the 55-300 really is an amazing lense for the price.

K5+55-300 @ 230 - 260mm, f5.6, ISO400, 1/500.
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Wah ! Wah !

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/Birds/Whos-A-Pretty-Boy-Then-1/1159782140_fhpmi-XL.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/Birds/Whos-A-Pretty-Boy-Then/1159789757_oHCsK-XL.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/Birds/Whos-A-Pretty-Boy-Then/1159786728_756TH-XL.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/Birds/Whos-A-Pretty-Boy-Then/1159826514_3PBeh-XL.jpg[/IMG]

Woman ! What have you done !!

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/Birds/Whos-A-Pretty-Boy-Then/1159795354_BynGQ-XL.jpg[/IMG]

Thanks Smutje - interesting comments re. B&W.

Pentaxophile ... I'm sure the K5 can do much better than these. I do believe that if I had shot at 25,600 then there would have been less noise than resurrecting these under-exposed shots (yes EV was boosted quite a lot in PP - contributing to the noise and softness). I thought it an interesting test to see what could be saved at 12,800 from under-exposed shots though. These are obviously not keepers / printers !
Comments appreciated !

K5, 55-300, ISO 12,800, 260-300mm, f5.6-5.8, 1/200. All are heavily PP'd.

Mountain Gorilla. Shot on a cold, grey day. Gorilla was inside with very little light at all - a little natural light coming in from a window on the left as we look at the gorilla but it was very dark even for humans - everyone else gave up trying to take photos (we were shooting through glass and the gorilla was too far away for the on-camera flashes to reach him). About 15M (50 feet) away. These shots came out very dark - I should have been shooting at 25,600 or even 51,200.

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/High-ISO-12800-51200/IMGP8109/1158356820_dDsBP-XL.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/High-ISO-12800-51200/Gorilla-1/1150055399_aPqzG-XL.jpg[/IMG]

Does converting it to B/W make it better or worse ?

[IMG]http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Other/High-ISO-12800-51200/Gorilla-1/1150050278_rdwsD-XL.jpg[/IMG]

Not with that swing !

#2 for me - should be titled 'Escape' !

#1 - the original for me.

Here's what I had in mind ... took 2 mins in Aperture 3

Original on the left, re-worked on the right.

[IMG]http://i52.tinypic.com/15qxnoy.jpg[/IMG]

Hmm - If this is cropped then I think it is too centred. Maybe lose just a little from the left and retain a little more on the right. Vertically seems fine.

On my laptop (MacBook - which generally have fantastic screens) Bob's version looks too warm whereas the original is not far off. What program are you using for editing ? I would suggest selectively lightening the head & right wing with a Dodge brush and then selectively re-sharpening the head with a sharpening brush.