Brown Hare

[Rich Steel]

Hi

I have spent the last two years photographing brown hares on and off. They are amazing animals but definately a little on the crazy side. I decided this year that I was going to make a concerted effort to try and get some 'boxing' photographs. This is the closest I have got so far but we are only just entering the 'mad march' period, so hopefully I will achieve the goal before the breeding period passes. One of the animals shown in this photo was really up for some boxing but the other was unfortunately, showing no interest to the taunts at all.

A strange moment arose while getting this photo, in that one of these usually very shy animals came trotting over to where I was crouched in the bushes and started sniffing one of my boots before casually walking off. That is what I call a close encounter and a great experience to be up so close to one :).

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k217/squidfish_2006/hare40.jpg

This photo was taken with 1Dmk3 and 500mm lens at ISO 400 F5.6 and 1/800s.

Cheers

Rich

[Robert Amoruso]

Rich,

Great DOF on this one and the looks on the hare's faces are killer. Being picky, I would have preferred not to seen the green/tan background line intersect the head. A bit higher elevation would get them on the tan BG. Nice work. You could also crop some of the OOF FG out as well.

[D. Robert Franz]

Great interaction here. I usually prescribe low shooting angles for wildlife but in this case wth the dark BG intersecting the head a higher angle would have worked well but in reality this was probably something you really didn't visualize so congrats on capturing it.....

[Kaushik Balakumar]

lovely image & nice moment. nice that u've got both the individuals in focus.

TFS,
rgds,
Kaushik

[Rich Steel]

Thanks for the replies. I agree a higer angler would have been of benefit for the background but it also probably would have led to no shot at all as my cover would have been blown and the hares taken off in a cloud of dust.

Cheers

Rich