Posting this in a haste because I wanted to get you Morkel in the mood for your upcoming trip...A little warm-up, in other words...
Not much work here, just basic LR and then a few tiny tweaks in CS6 (levels and curves) and those done not selectively I am afraid, things are hectic at work and home right now so forgive me for sloppy PP work...Some very dark shadows from the tree on the RHS and maybe the predator and prey do not "pop" well enough, the skyline not perfect with those grasses half way up there but anyway, here it is, sharpened for web...
and Morkel - I take this opportunity to wish you a safe trip, amazing sightings and awesome photographic opportunities!
This was near Mata Mata - one of your favourite "hunting" grounds, I believe...
Techs:
Nikon D4
Nikon 500mm
ISO 400
F6.3
1/2500s
Happy travels Morkel!!! Say hello to my lions please
Oh Gabriela you know just which buttons to push!!
Great framing with the red sand dune on top and the action between the trees. Did the lions get their meal??? Please show more!
This time the closest we will be to Mata-Mata is Urikaruus
Fabulous image Gabriela! Very well composed and shot, shows the vastness / wilderness of the land and the chase shows the reality of the bush! Loved it. TFS.
I would have liked to reply to your comments earlier but when we got home from work there was no electricity again:) It is back now, but who knows for how long?
I am really glad you liked this, it has been sitting in my folders for a while until the other night when I thought of Morkel going to the Kalahari and wanted to get him excited about potential sightings:)
Morkel, this was at 13th borehole in October this year and there was no water at the water hole itself. We came upon three lionesses accompanied by four youngsters and decided to stay with them for a while. At some point they dug near the water tank where the pipe was broken and managed to drink, there was the occasional scuffle but nothing too serious... Eventually they all scattered about looking for some shade.
One of the females (the one in this image) is Mean Old Fred's partner...And yes we were sad to realise that Fred is not around anymore - the last time we saw them together (Macrh 2014) he looked really worn out and I guess he only survived for so long thanks to his brave strong girl - she has given him so many generations of cubs and probably fed him till his last days...They were such an amazing couple those two, we photographed them while they were mating in September 2009 and saw them almost every year thereafter, they always had cubs (sometimes subadults as well as little ones) and Fred allowed them to stick around till they were ready to hunt for themselves,...also, he was very tolerant of the little ones and a few times we saw them pulling his tail and climbing on his back...all he did was growl and roll over on the other side...Never saw a lion and lioness together for so long, and the very first time we met Freddie he had this terrible injury, lip hanging and tooth missing as well as an abscess. It healed quite well but the lip was always hanging afterwards so it was so easy to recognise him every year without having to count his spots:) The youngsters are certainly his kids, we photographed them in March this year and it looks like the female has formed a strong alliance with those other lionesses.
Back to this image, well there was no kill because everyone else was too hot or too lazy to give chase...The lioness returned rather exhausted from the chase and took it out on the other females, seemingly frustrated that she went to all that trouble on her own and risked getting a kick in her face from the giraffe :) All happened at some distance in the river bed and the characters are quite small in the frame, when they got close enough for me to get a decent shot a fallen tree got in the way...I will post some more if you like, the B/W lions I showed you few weeks ago (with the subadults walking together) was taken not long after this chase.
Once again, hope you travel safely Morkel and I wish you great photographic opportunities!
Hi Gabriela , not too bad outcome for a quick and sloppy edit. I really like the action in a wide view happening ,we all wished it would have happened closer , at least me. I do not even have a picture of this was again busy getting to that location , cause i took the other loop to look for the lions . And came once again too late for this .
I remember waiting with you and some other cars for a longer time at that location for things to happen , the majority of cars had gone . All of a sudden , for whatever reason , one of the younger males got frightened and started to run .And then all started running , apart from one younger female . So we waited for them to all reunite , but this did not really happen . They all disappeared into the bushes of the dunes , so finally we left , too .
Good choice of colors and tonal range , even if the blacks are a tad strong in places , but no big deal .
Hi Gabriela, the scale of subjects within fame and the choice of crop both contribute in a very nice capture. Looks well balance in colour, don't feel the dark shadows an issue, but would have liked a hint more sky and to avoid cropping the grass, but just my take, good to see you getting to grips more with your PP.
Steve, unfortunately I did not have any more space at the top, I only cropped from the bottom and sides here. Would have loved more sky but at the time I captured this I was anticipating the other lionesses or the youngsters to participate so I allowed some space below for them to enter the scene. They did run up the dune but turned back, I stayed with the "hunter" because it was more exciting...I have more sky in some other shots from the same sequence but I liked this one more for various reasons:) I am very happy you noticed my efforts to improve my PP work, so encouraging to hear this from you...and I am still working on that WOW image
Andreas - like I said, it was indeed a quick and sloppy edit, I could have dealt with the grasses at the top (they look kind of "chopped" ) and done my PP carefully to avoid the dark shadows and the tree branches on the RHS. But I wanted to surprise Morkel with this, knowing he was going to the KTP and 13th borehole was going to be his "hunting ground". I had to be fast, at the time I was busy uploading he had no electricity at home (load shedding) so I hoped he would check for new posts later in the evening or early morning the next day... not long after I wrote the text and uploaded, our power was cut for a couple of hours. We try and work around this, nowadays. Very inconvenient and you will remember that we get home from work after 5pm, after doing house chores and cooking etc we only have so little time to "play". Sometimes I go home with this desire to work on a particular image, set up everything and get the coffee machine going, only to hear the beep of the UPS announcing that the electricity is gone...very frustrating and thinking seriously of acquiring a big generator...
Just wanted to add that December is the busiest time of the year for myself and Andre, at work and at home. We might not be able to post images but we will try our best to pop in and view as well as comment. For now, wishing you a fabulous week-end, we are off to Durban tomorrow to pick up Andre's little ones...Oops, the power just cut off again...have a great evening...