We followed the mother leopard to a steep, narrow ravine where she showed her large youngster the impala meal of the day. It was interesting to watch the young leopard tear into the carcass and seemingly choose what internal organs to eat first. Maybe the liver? Getting images was difficult as the ravine was very steep and it seemed like the vehicle was nearly tipping over, but still vegetation was in the way for much of the activity, or the leopard's head was down eating. Only a few times could I get the leopard with his head up and the impala in the image at the same time. Once the initial feasting was over, the young leopard dragged the carcass into the thicker vegetation. All-in-all, a terrific new experience for me.
Hi Nancy -- I like the lovely eye contact with that tongue curling out and also beautiful colors on the leopard ! I think the slow ss speed reflects on the sharpness of the image and again like your previous images that iso was not upto the mark on the 1D X .
The organs make this a bit gory for me , would have prefered to crop it out from the bottom to avoid that brownish stuff .
Excellent timing Nancy - gory but that's life. You've done well to stop the action with a fairly slow shutter speed - can I ask have you had to sharpen the final image to compensate a little?
The head up pose though is superb, gives a great look at those eyes - wouldn't want to be the cat that tried to muscle in on the meal!
My reluctance to raise the ISO is really a stumbling block that I must get over; it is left over from my previous camera capabilities. Here my biology background took over and I became fascinated with the identity of each internal organ and had no thought of gore. No one else in my vehicle shared my anatomy interests . However, Haseeb, you do have a good point about cropping up some from the bottom to remove that brown blob part. And yes, I did add some sharpening in Lightroom.
Hi Nancy - I know the others really push the ISO and the 1DX has great high ISO capabilities so certainly you could go higher than 1600. How high to go for me with any camera is a function of both the camera's capabilities and what my ultimate intended use is of the photo (e.g. large print, posting on BPN, record shot, etc). Yes, this would have been better with a faster ss. Great look to camera and I like the suggestion of a small crop to get rid of some of the organs.|
The head looks perfectly sharp even being close to being over sharp but that could be my monitor and of course personal taste, kill certainly tells the story to the full, must have been great to witness, fine piece of work Nancy.
Nancy, this is a spectacular sighting and the image portrays the scene well and your description gives us a sense of the surroundings too. Nicely done!