A friend and I spent two afternoons photographing a pack of wild dogs all by ourselves in a sandy riverbed in the Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe last week.
I will never forget the 2nd afternoon, when we leopard-crawled through crusted river sand and pebbles for over 40 meters to get within good shooting distance, ending up with bleeding elbows and bruised knees. Just before we had to leave, the Alpha Male got up and stalked towards us, growled a couple of times, took in our scent, and then lied down about 7 meters from us, relaxed again. An absolutely thrilling moment!!
I didn't have any noteworthy images in my portfolio of this endangered species, and am so stoked to have come back from Mana Pools with a truckload of images from low angles like this, with an unobstructed view of the canines. As we left the park we met up with the Painted Dog Conservation Trust who were inbound to come and collar some of the members of this pack - so I'm glad we got some 'clean' shots...
I've got many shots to share, but I thought I'd post this one here on BPN first to entice some discussion :Whoa!:. I was lying on my belly for this shot (actually, for most of them).
This is the main guy checking us out - focus distance 16.8m :2eyes2:
I cut off the lower parts of his legs since he was just too close and he'd approached so rapidly we hadn't had time to remove our converters. I cropped closer to get a better composition here and make the legs look less "chopped off" than they did with more of them in the frame. What do you think???
As usual with these sightings and me - it was overcast at sunset which resulted in me having to push the ISO, since DOF + SS was at a premium at this shooting distance.
Techs:
Nikon D3s with Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II + 1.4x TC @ 700mm
f6.3 @ 1/320 SS @ ISO-8000
EV +0.3
lying on the ground, lens supported on Badger Beanbag
Cropped to about 80% of original frame (cropped from RHS and bottom)
BG as shot


