(Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 VR @ 280mm, 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800)

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No matter how many times you get to photograph it, a big male lion staring directly at you makes for a pretty decent photo.

Nothing fancy about this one.  Zoom in, wait for eye contact and fire away.  This particular image was shot in overcast conditions so the soft, diffused light worked wonder on the male’s scarred face.  Yeah, photographing male lions never gets old!

Until next time.

Gerry

Sometimes things just work out and when you have options it’s just so much better.

Yesterday morning we spent almost two hours with a pride of lions consisting of two large males, two females and five cubs of about 4 months of age.  Great sighting which included lions feeding on a wildebeest, lions roaring, cubs playing, females smacking males and the list just goes on.  What made things even better is that all of this took place in the early morning sun which meant we had fantastic light to work with.  Every now and then a lone cloud would drift across the sun which left us with a golden, diffused light before the direct light would come through again.  Stunning light with which to photograph wildlife.

The lions were literally all over the place which gave us the opportunity to move around and position ourselves to make the best use of the changing light conditions.  We filled up quite a few memory cards and what was specifically nice was that, after we had a number of solid image, we could start playing around and experiment with different angles, exposures and compositions.  In wildlife photography a well exposed, clean and technically sound image is always on the top of the list but there is always room for images that are sightly different.  Images that make you look twice or draw you in because of that special something.

Out of all the hundreds of images I shot two stood out because of that something.  The first was an image of the two males who were in the process of giving each other a bit of brotherly love as they licked and cuddled after their breakfast.  These to guys have a bit of a reputation as bad boys due to their temper and history of fighting and injuring other males in ‘negotiations’ about territory.  You might also recall a post I did last week called Heavyweight Fight which showed two males lions having a full on go at each other. Same two males, so to see these two large cats get cozy again was a great sighting.

Shot during one of the cloudy moments, for me there are three things that make this image stand out.  The tongues, the way the male on the right is looking at his brother and single open eye on the other male.  Your gaze keeps on moving between these three elements and what also helps is the diagonal lines created by both the lions heads leading down to the tongue.

One of the other images that stood out for me was one of three future bad boys.  Well from what we could see at this young age I think they were all boys.

These cubs, and there two other siblings, were in serious play mode which kept out shutters working overtime.  The three youngsters had just finished attacking each other when suddenly, as if a referee blew a whistle, they all stopped and started off in their own direction.  I shot this specific image just before their breakup and when I looked at the series of images afterwards it was the repetition of tails that caught my eye.  I did crop the image slightly during post processing and in this situation I felt quite comfortable placing the group of youngsters in the middle of the frame as there is a lot happening due not only to the tails but also the implied movement by the one cub and stare of the front one.  Not (exactly) planned like that but worked out great!

Whether you like it or not, luck remains a huge part of wildlife photography but you still have to make sure you pay attention to the basics in order for that luck to help you to create images with that little something extra.

Will be back with another post which includes a few new images that have been uploaded to the Photo-Africa Stock Library and more details on tomorrow’s guest post.

See ya later!

Gerry

Seeing two male lions have a go at each other is an amazing sight!

Yeah yeah I know I said that I am going to try and photograph other subjects rather than lions!  The thing is that I quite like the following sequence of two fully grown male lions having a fight and I also kinda ran out of time in between trying to sort out the aftermath of an office PC crash.  Will get back onto photographing other subjects and post them soon!

Over the weekend we sat watching a pride of 13 lions.  One of the two males, sporting a bruised and injured eye, was obviously very irate with life.  Out of nowhere he got up and charged his brother who was laying very peacefully in between other members of the pride.  The entire episode was over in less than 5 seconds but what a spectacle!  Luckily I already had my camera ready and focused on the male that was with the pride so I aimed, tried to keep up and let the Nikon’s 8 frames per second shutter do it what needs to do.

Amazing scenes and sounds were frightening!  Sometimes we get caught so caught up in the technical side of our images that we forget about content.   For me these images are all content, even if it just as a reminder of a special sighting.  The dappled light made for difficult exposure, the background was ‘busy’ but check how the rest of the pride make way as the two big guys take each other on.  Content!  On the tech side of things I was quite impressed with the tracking and autofocus on my old Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8.  I only shot these 7 frames and they were all acceptable.  Not bad.

Anyway, as I was working through the images in Lightroom I also liked the intensity in the eye of the one male.

This is a seriously zoomed in crop of the second last image but you can get the idea. They eye of the one lion and the blood on the ear of the other leaves no doubt that this was not quite a training exercise.  After the dust settled the one male was licking his wounds in a nearby thicket as the guy who started everything settled in to relax with the rest of the pride.  You can see how the old wound next to his eye was opened up again in the altercation with his brother.

As a follow up, we saw this pride and the two males again yesterday morning and even though they still kept their distance from each other you could see that there was still a little bit of tension.  Interesting times ahead.

See ya tomorrow.

Gerry

Madikwe has a pale leopard called ‘Sepoko’ meaning ghost.

The Leopard Conservation Project is currently looking for images and videos of this very rare African predator.  If you work in, or have ever visited, the Madikwe Game Reserve and have any images of the pale male that gets seen around the western parts of the reserve you might be able to not only assist the Leopard Conservation Project but also win some great prizes.

Here are a few images of the pale male, Sepoko, that lives in Madikwe.

Below is an email I recently received from Michelle from the Leopard Conservation Project.

“I work with a conservation effort, the Leopard Conservation Project, www.leopardcon.co.za, we came across a leopard similar to the pale one at Madikwe, sadly this one had been hit by a car and did not survive, since then we have been focusing a lot of our research on this variation of leopard. So far this tells us that there are only about 4 of these magnificent animals in the world. There may be more, but there have been no reports.

We are running a competition to publish 2 books, 1 for the Pale Leopards, and different variations of leopard, and one for the White Lions of Timbavati, we are working with Linda Tucker on this.”

If you have any images of the Madikwe pale leopard you can email them to the details above.

If you have any questions or comments please give me a shout!

Gerry