Playing with Lions

This last weekend was filled with lions.  Lots of lions.

With colder winter temperatures the large cats are  lot of more active which means that there are a lot more opportunities to photograph them actually doing something.  These two young lions were busy walking down the road when they heard something and suddenly there was a perfect moment of photographic symmetry.

After I captured this image the two cats, along with their brother and mother, almost got hold of a Spotted Hyena that came screaming out of the bush.  By the time all the excitement died down the sun had already dropped below the horizon.  After a little lay down the pride got up again and continued between our vehicles.  Time a bit of photographic play with lions.

Even at an ISO of 3200 I could still only squeeze out a shutter speed of 1/8 second so I decided to try the old zoom from out to in while the shutter was open and this was the result.

Nice feel of movement due to the zoom effect don’t you think?  I only had enough time to try this one image before the lions were all past us and settled a little further up the road.

By now it was pitch dark and the only way in which to get any photography done was to ask one of the other vehicles to shine their spotlight on the cats which allowed us to play around with some abstract lines and shapes.  Unfortunately these guys were very tired and did not do too much but I still got a few great abstract lion images.

This image of the old female in the pride worked quite well with the spotlight from the side.

The bottom line is this – just because the sun goes down and all the beautiful photographic light is gone does not mean you have to put your camera away!  Keep your eyes open and try new things!  I have said this before – there are photo opportunities everywhere.

More soon!

Gerry