We are back from what now has to be my favourite wildlife-photography location in Southern Africa...Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe.
One of the main goals of our trip was to photograph the elephants in the iconic forests of this park (consisting of Ana and Acacia trees)...the cherry on top would be to be able to photograph the bull elephants standing erect on their hind legs to break off branches to fee on (the trees grow very tall here). Well, the cherries fell on us in droves, particularly supplied by this large bull who was very adept at it and would repeat this behaviour quite a few times every time we came across him.
This image was captured early one morning when we found him and his 2 younger "askari" cohorts in a very photogenic patch of trees. With the advantage of being able to get out and walk around as you please in this park, we got out and ran around like mad men for 2 hours capturing a ton of amazing images. I will never forget that experience. This is one of my favourite "rises". I hope you like seeing this as much as I liked being able to photograph it!
Techs:
Nikon D3s with Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II
f5.6 @ 1/500 SS @ ISO-1250
handheld, crouching
full frame, cropped for slight rotation