Moving among the shadows of a Kingdom

This photograph that I have taken is of a young male leopard which has been seen regularly within our reserve, is the son of the late female that was commonly known around Sabi Sabi as White Dam female, and the son to the current territorial holding male called the Maxabeni male. On the reserve, he is referred to as the White Dam male.

Recently this male has become sexually mature and is just under three years of age (born in December 2014), and to this date has been seen mating with two female leopards within his father’s territory. However, he has not been chased out, and the dominant male, Maxabeni tolerates him. Prior to writing this blog, I witnessed both male leopards (Maxabeni and White Dam male) mate with the same female leopard within the same sighting, side by side. No aggression was shown by the dominant male and only submissive behaviour from the young male. Behaviour one will never understand and cannot be explained in a textbook. This is the type of amazement being fortunate to work in one of the best Game Reserves in South Africa, the ability to see unusual sightings that most can say they haven’t seen or heard of before. Now we wait to see what the future holds for the young White Dam male - could it be possibly taking over his father’s territory? No one knows, but only time will tell.

Equipment Used

• Camera – Canon 7D mk ii
• Lens and Focal length – Canon-EF100-400mm f-4.5-5.6 L IS USM at 400mm

Settings used to capture this image

• ISO – 1000
• Aperture – f 5.6
• Shutter – 1/320

Editing used on this image

For such image to be displayed, I firstly lowered the exposure of the image making the surroundings and shadow darken areas slightly darker to add an effect. With that I increased the contrast of the image and also decreased the white balance and vibrancy to keep the realistic effect and colouration. I then increased the highlights to make the object, that of the leopard, stand out and decreased the black and the shadows to blend in and create a solid black background. To add an extra effect, I added a post-crop vignette to create the exiting of a shadow effect to complete my photograph for display.