Leopard Turtle (or Tortoise?)

[Rich Ikerd]

Leopard Turtle, Northern Serengeti, Tanzania
D300, 7-200mm @ 150mm, f/5.6 @ 1/500 sec, iso 400

One of the few times we ventured from the safari vehicle was to get low for this guy. The story we told everyone at camp was that since we had not yet encountered any leopards, we were going to put this little guy in a tree and then take his photo so we could have the coveted "leopard in a tree" image.:) Needless to say, we let him to go his merry way without any interference.

[Ed Cordes]

Nice story. I like the image. It is well focused and the low angle you got is a big plus. I do find the dried grass that seems to stick out of his nose like a horn a bit distracting. If it meets your ethics I would clone it out.

[D. Robert Franz]

Pretty good low angle here for working from you vehicle. A few distracting grasses but turtles are tough that way. Well done...

[Ken Watkins]

This is a tortoise, the differences are explained here

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Tortoise_vs_Turtle

This is a relatively rare image mainly down to the fact that very few people get out of the car to take a picture, I must confess to having none.

I would not worry about the grasses except the one coming out of the nose, a slight bit of cloning will remove this.

[Rich Ikerd]

Guess I must have totally overlooked the grass and nose intersection. Thanks for pointing it out. This was the only time that we were able to quickly jump out of the vehicle and get on the ground. And even then there was always the nagging feeling that something was watching . . .