Matusadona Lion 1

[Ken Watkins]

Matusadona National Park abuts the shoreline of Lake Kariba, and in years past was famous for its Lion v Bufallo battles.

As a result of the higher rainfall in the past few years the lake level no longer drops as far in the winter months, so there are far smaller plains of lush fresh grass for the Buffalo to graze on and for the Lions to attack, The Bufallo now spend most of the time inland and the Lions follow, this year we were priviliged to see many Lions whose main prey are Kudu and Impalla.

Here is the Male we saw last year now becoming a big boy.

Taken on Rhino Island 25th September 2011, in the late evening.

EOS 1D MkIV

500mm F4 IS hand-held

F5,6, ISO 400, 1/500

[Gary Hamilton]

I like the pose, sharpness, the look in his eyes, the open mouth and even those big feet that he will eventually grow into. I have to say, though, that the image suffers a bit from the subject being in the shade when there is sunlight behind him. It just doesn't pop enough for me. You may be able to go lighter with the lion to make him stand out more. Others may have better post processing suggestions on how to achieve a stronger image. Cheers.

[Ken Watkins]

Gary,

The difficuly here is that Lions are not easy to place in the brighter light:bg3:

I took it solely for the pose and the light in his eyes, this male is around 5 years old as can be seen from the black mane.

[Harshad Barve]

Lovely pose and nice specimen too , liked this lot
TFS

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Loved this a lot !! His eyes seem to searching for prey ! Handsome guy !!

[Morkel Erasmus]

Sure looks like he's king of the pile up there, Ken...nice specimen, proud pose...
I played around with selective dodging and burning to enhance him a bit. Might have 'overcooked' it for your tastes, but just to show what can be done.

Dodged midtones and shadows on the lion, burned highlights on the BG. WDYT?

[Ken Watkins]

Morkel,

Thanks for your repost, apart from the darker BG, the differences are very subtle, as the Lion was standing in shade I think I prefer it to be darker

[Rachel Hollander]

Ken - Nice portrait (but I like portraits). I am curious though given some of your recent comments about other images, what in your opinion makes this more than an "ordinary portrait" of a lion?

TFS,
Rachel

[Ken Watkins]

Rachel,

I think I can say that in this case the Lion was not lying down doing nothing, he had actually paused on his walk towards us.

IMHO a far more interesting situation and I believe more difficult to capture, but that is just my opinion, which may not be shared by others:w3