This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
I photographed this male lion at sunrise in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy. I just read that they weigh up to about 570 pounds. Wow. This guy just exudes power. I’m glad they never jump into safari vehicles that stop for photos just 20 yards away. They never do, right?
When I arrived at Gamewatchers Safaris’ Porini Lion Camp, the first cat I expected to see was, well, a lion, and hopefully a whole pride of lions. As it turned out, the first cat or cats I saw were three cheetah brothers and, a few minutes later, this serval cat who was walking around near us and the cheetahs. The serval is a beautiful little cat about the size of our bobcats here in North America. I don’t know how it survives with all the bigger predators, but it does. Maybe the big cats understand that it mainly feeds on rodents and insects and thus isn’t competing with them for food.
Like most nature photographers, my favorite times to photograph nature are those two hours or so centered on sunrise and sunset. If there are flowers to add color to the scene, so much the better. So, I was happy when this female leopard stopped in this setting for a moment.
It was 6:33pm, one minute after sunset, when I took this photo.
While I went to Kenya last month mainly to photograph the big cats, there were times when I shot other subjects. That was the case with this spotted hyena. I don’t think many people think of hyenas as great subjects to photograph, but this one had the benefit of that golden hour of sunlight like the male lion I posted a week ago. This hyena was photographed at 6:50 a.m. local time. Sunrise was at about 6:30 a.m. then, as I recall.
This golden light is why we nature photographers try to be out there before the sun rises. When I was at Gamewatchers’ Porini Lion Camp (Porini means “in the wild” in Swahili) in Kenya in early June we were awakened by the Swahili greeting “jambo” (“hello”) at 5:30 a.m. We were then given a tray with a pitcher of coffee or tea and 5 or 6 cookies which would get us going. We’d leave camp at 6:15 a.m. sharp and be looking for wildlife as we drove away. At around 8:00 a.m. we’d stop for a nice hot bush breakfast. This male lion was photographed at 7:05 a.m.
I photographed this cheetah cub playing with its mom last month while spending four great days at Gamewatchers’ Porini Mara Camp in the Ol Kinyei Conservancy in Kenya. As I recall, my guide, George, told me this cheetah mother started with six cubs but lions got all but this one. I hope it makes it to adulthood.
A lioness carries her cub to a new den in the Ol Kinyei Conservancy, Kenya. Mother lions normally keep their new cubs away from the pride for the first six to eight weeks of life and move them fairly frequently during that period to minimize the ability of other wildlife to smell where they are.
