Sunrise Pride

Gallery: WildlifePosted December 9, 2012233 views5 comments

I am slowly working my way through the images I captured during our epic lion-kill sighting in the Kgalagadi recently. I will be doing a series of blog posts to show these in the right sequence/succession, but for now will be sharing some of them as I "feel it"...

This was the sight that awaited us as we approached the barren plains opposite the Samevloeiing waterhole at the confluence of dry riverbeds of the Nossob and Auob rivers. This pride of lions were lounging on a sand dune about 8km south of this spot the previous afternoon/evening, and I'd hoped they would be in this region by dawn. Little did we know what would play out in front of us.

In this shot you can see one of the males actually sleeping in the background, while the 2 females in front of him are on high alert as the eland were approaching the open plains. The sunrise mood in the background added so much to the scene, not just photographically but purely visually too. I like that I was able to capture this amount of dynamic range in a single image with my new D800 camera.

Techs:
Nikon D800 with Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VR-II @ 190mm
f4.0 @ 1/400 SS @ ISO-360
handheld

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Peter Cross on December 9, 2012 at 9:21 PM

This is great Morkel. Seems a bit unusual to see the lions deployed like this. But what do I know as I've never been to Africa. I think the story behind this adds a lot to it. I do hope you share more with us. My only question would be about perhaps decreasing the aperature a bit to bring the big trees more into focus. As the lions were rock still, you had SS to spare. But that may be what you wanted. Great picture nevertheless.

Registered on April 3, 2010, 271 Posts, 1342 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on December 9, 2012 at 10:06 PM

Great scene, filled with implied drama. Waiting for more...

Registered on December 9, 2007, 258 Posts, 9892 Comments

Comment posted by Ajit Huilgol on December 10, 2012 at 12:41 AM

Beautiful early morning scene! There are no tree or bush cover (or even grass!) for the lions; so, they are hugging the ground as closely as possible to conceal themselves as best as they can. You can sense the explosive power with which they are going to launch themselves as soon as the eland come within about 50 metres or so. This image has all this drama ingrained into it! Waiting for the 'explosion'!

Registered on December 19, 2008, 302 Posts, 2055 Comments

Comment posted by Morkel Erasmus on December 10, 2012 at 3:23 PM

Thanks guys. Peter...I was shooting these with one hand still on the D3s/500mm combo as I didn't want to miss the action.
I was sort-of on f4 by default, and in hindsight should have stopped down to f8...but I think there's good definition in the background?

Registered on March 22, 2011, 385 Posts, 2068 Comments

Comment posted by S Govindarajan on December 12, 2012 at 4:00 PM

Very interesting to see the open landscape where these lions live. I like the resting poses of the lions that goes with the early morning calm.

Registered on April 19, 2008, 115 Posts, 1921 Comments