Desperately Wanting

This was a special sighting, not only was there a leopard in a tree, there were two leopards in a tree with a Grey Duiker kill! The kill was made by the dominant male, Maxabeni and this picture is of his offspring, the young White Dam male, who was watching his father feeding. I called this picture “Desperately Wanting” as this young leopard could not look more attentive to the kill if he tried!

I had never seen these two leopards in the same sighting together and it was interesting to see the interaction between these males. At the age of two and a half years and living within his father’s territory, the sub adult White Dam should have been pushed out by now. I loved the look on this leopard’s face as his father casually fed on the Duiker kill and showed no attention to the scrapping clan of Hyenas below the tree.

The key to this photograph and the reason why little processing, was the utilisation of two spotlights in the sighting. I captured a similar picture with back lighting where just the halo of the leopard was visible. I decided to use this picture as I needed to have a front lit spotlight to illustrate the expression on the face of the young predator. This knowledge by the Rangers and Trackers of Sabi Sabi allows for great photographic opportunities in usually difficult lighting conditions.

Equipment used

• Camera – Nikon D4S
• Lens and Focal length – Nikkor 200mm-400mm VRII @ 300mm

Settings used to capture this image

• ISO 10000 – This was probably a little on the high side, but in this sighting, there were elements of movement taking place. I was not losing anything by raising it to this level as the Nikon D4S excels in low lighting conditions.
• Aperture f/4 – This allowed for a pin sharp focus. I didn’t need any form of depth of field due to the positioning of the subject, but needed maximum amount of light to enter the lens and sensor.
• Shutter 1/60– A fast shutter needs to work to eliminate motion blur and a fast shutter speed could only be made possible by the ISO and Aperture.

Editing used on this image

With most photos, it’s always best to try and get it right in camera first and then use editing to try and replicate what the eye sees. Shooting in RAW is a way that you can maximise the information present within the digital image with compressing the file as in a JPEG. I always trust the camera to get the White Balance right, but in this instance, the original image was a little too cool at 2750K, so I wanted to bring out the colour of the leopard’s orange coat - 2985K, I felt was sufficient to do this. Apart from minor increments of the clarity and the vibrancy, the only slider I used was darkening the “Blacks”, emphasising the darkness of the night and presence of the gorgeous leopard.