What’s wrong with this picture?

There are two things wrong with this photograph that stand out to me. First, the image is too blue. In photographic lingo, it’s too cool. Second, and a much bigger problem, the foreground cheetah isn’t sharp. Out of focus foregrounds, especially when the soft portion of the picture is one of the subjects, is simply unacceptable.

My settings for this image were 1/500, f/8, and 3200 ISO. I used a 500mm focal length, and that meant depth of field was very shallow. I was only able to focus on one of the cheetahs, and my ‘Two Subject Rule’ refers to having two subjects in the composition and they both have to be sharp. There were four solutions for this problem. First, I could use a wider angle lens to gain DOF -- but that would make the cats appear further away. Second, I could move further back and refocus, also for an increase in DOF -- but that would make the cheetahs smaller in the frame. Third, I could use a smaller lens aperture like f/16 -- but that would slow the shutter down and blur might result. In addition, given the

close proximity to the cats and the 500mm focal length, even f/16 wouldn’t render both animals as sharp as I wanted.

The fourth solution is the one I chose. I took two pictures in quick sucession, one where I focused on the foreground cheetah and another in which I focused on the cheetah furthest from the camera. In Photoshop, I opened both images and I cloned from one picture to another. In other words, I cloned a sharp animal over its unsharp counterpart in the other photo. This took, surprisingly, only about 10 seconds to do. Both pictures were taken from the same spot, and because neither cat moved between the two exposures, this worked out perfectly.

To clone from one picture to another, use the clone tool as you normally do. Activate photo one, hold down the option key (on a Mac) or the alt key (on a PC), click the spot from which the cloning will begin, and then release the key, activate photo two, and begin cloning at the corresponding spot. In other words, if the first click on photo one is the tip of the ear, you begin cloning on the tip of the ear on photo two.

To eliminate the bluish color, I brought the final composite back into Adobe Camera Raw (Filter > camera raw filter) and moved the temperature slider toward the warmer, i.e. more yellow, portion of the scale. §