Lazy morning

Gallery: WildlifePosted May 26, 2011127 views5 comments

This was taken on a morning that started out extremely slow. Literally empty plains of grass for hours and then, when starting to concider going back to camp for lunch, we run into this fellow and his two brothers resting under a tree. They were very lazy, but it was a great sight and what I surely expected to be the highlight of the day. However, after leaving them alone mother nature had some more in store for us - but that's a story for another time ...

I struggled to get as close to eye level as possible with this magnificent cat, literally crawling on the 4WD floor with my butt in the air, and having the driver down in a shallow hollow. Had to accept some strays of oof grass for that. How bad is it? Should I try to clone?

Masai Mara
40D, 100-400
1/500, f7.1

Critiques and comments highly appreciated

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Ashley Vincent on May 27, 2011 at 1:04 AM

Real nice close up Johan, and well worth the effort you apparently put into getting yourself into the lowest possible position :^)

I love the fact that you've captured this with the Lion's eye open in this way; although it's probably more in a trance-like state than anything else, has me thinking thoughts of what it might be thinking about itself ;^p

As to the strays and OOF grass, personally I'd definitely see how many of them I could remove or clone out, then again, I'm more into creating compelling impressions of what I saw rather than documentary style images that purists and others tend to prefer ;^)

Very much looking forward to more stories and images of yours set for other times ahead :^)

Registered on March 1, 2011, 154 Posts, 2083 Comments

Comment posted by David Sparks on May 27, 2011 at 5:57 PM

The low angle adds a lot to the image and I was chuckling at your description of how it was accomplished. I'm new to non-avian wildlife photography and would have been delighted to have gotten this very sharp, low angle, close-up photo of this magnificent animal. Accordingly, I will let others comment on the advisability of trying to clone the oof grass.

Registered on May 26, 2007, 290 Posts, 4270 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on May 27, 2011 at 7:33 PM

I like this, especially for the seldom achieved really low perspective. The up close framing is effective and I don't find those stray grass stems to be a problem at all.

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

Comment posted by Billy Fairburn on May 29, 2011 at 3:01 AM

I like this a lot - great eye contact and the perspective is cool. The grasses are quite distracting but I could live with them I think. Cloning would be difficult due to the detail in the mane and fur but might be worth a go at least.

Billy

Registered on March 3, 2007, 123 Posts, 717 Comments

Comment posted by Vincent Grafhorst on May 30, 2011 at 1:48 PM

Johan, I am glad to see that you know how effective a low perspective can be on the intimacy of an image. This one is really intimate; as if the viewer is lying next to this big boy in the grass! The OOF grass blades are unfortunate and I wonder why you did not brush them aside whilst you were down there.

Not an easy cloning job to get rid of those OOF blades without leaving any traces (in a large version anyway), but in this case it might be worth a try.

Registered on February 24, 2006, 504 Posts, 7203 Comments