Bon-Appetit is a play on a saying here in Africa: "Born Up a Tree" :)
Taken whilst leading a Photo Safari in the Okavango Delta, Botswana;
High up in a lead-wood tree a 2 year old leopard feasts on the remains of an Impala caught by his mother an hour earlier (08h44). The visible bone is the Impala's lower jawbone but upside down. Leopards hunt in the cool hours of the day so 04h00 starts every day for 21 days were necessary if one is to get any chance of witnessing the hunt or the feeding session later.
This is one of my best ever Leopard sightings after 30 years in the bush. They are completely wild, elusive and thus rare to see in the bush. However (tented) game lodges in the area co-operate with one another via 2 way radios to assist their and neighbours guests in getting sightings.
Taken in the last vestiges of true African wilderness near Machaba Camp, a 3000km drive and two Bush Aircraft hops from my home in Johannesburg.
Photographed with my superb Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG APO OS HSM coupled to a Sigma 2.0x Tele Converter, effectively giving me 360-900mm starting at f/5.6 on a crop sensor. This image was taken at the long end, 300mm, with the 2x TC thus 600mm and then add a crop factor of 1.5x (900mm@f/5.6!) Who says Sigma's aren't sharp?
PP: Very little drastic editing done to the image other than crop, slight dodge to the eyes, smart sharpen due the loss going down to 96dpi (Web) from 300dpi, a little red, yellow saturation increase and desaturation of green grass, blue sky hue on the fur which your eye instantly corrects but the camera sensor cannot, then save for web. A rather disappointing score that plummeted from a 6.4xxx in the last day of voting to 6.1xxx (When is DPC going to add a "Wildlife" Category? I refuse to put my Wildlife images in the "Nature", or as I call it "Zoo" Site Gallery).
Statistics
Place: 40 out of 164 Avg (all users): 6.1648 Avg (commenters): 7.7500 Avg (participants): 6.1774 Avg (non-participants): 6.1379 Views since voting: 1055 Views during voting: 169 Votes: 91 Comments: 6 Favorites: 1 (view)
Didn't vote in this month's FS (I know, I'm apalled at myself, too), but I would have given this one a 10, easy. It's clearly a leopard in the wild and I know they're elusive creatures, and it's got eye contact and is sharp as a tack and tells a story. I'd have been happy to get any recognizable shot of a wild leopard; to get one like this ... just remarkable.
How fortunate you were. Moremi is such a wonderful place. But Gary Player once said the harder you work (practise) the luckier you get. Fantastic picture. So well done.
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