Mating leopards in the dark

This is a rare shot of leopards mating at night. I took the picture with a medium format film camera (the Mamiya RZ 67) before I went digital, and it was necessary to use artificial light – in this case, flash – because I was shooting in the dark. I’ve had this picture now for 25 years, and there were two things about it that bothered me a lot. Because I used a 500mm RZ telephoto (equivalent to a 300mm focal length in the full frame digital format), I didn’t have the flexibility of composition typical of zooms. In the original capture, I had no choice but to crop the hind end of both cats because they were just too close to my Land Rover. The second thing that really bothered me in the original was the female’s head was turned away from my angle of view. I couldn’t see either of her eyes or any part of her face. It occurred to me that the new AI technology in Photoshop might address these issues, so I tried Generative Expand to complete the right-hand portion of the leopard’s bodies. It worked great. Then I applied Generative Fill to address the issue of the female’s face being obscured. The command I requested was: “Turn the female leopard’s face toward the camera somewhat.” I was absolutely astonished that the result was so perfect, exactly what I wanted. The camera settings in the original were unrecorded, but they were probably 1/125, f/6, and back then I always used Fujichrome Provia 100 for wildlife photography. My flash was the powerful Metz 60 CT2 model. The mint green color in the male’s eye is a reflection from the flash, similar to red eye in people. In the July issue of my free monthly eMagazine, I will show the original and discuss this more.