Leopard Ascent

A male African Leopard scales a tree with blinding speed and agility to get to its prey. This image was taken in overcast light at sunset, hence the insane EXIF settings. I could only muster 1/200 Shutter Speed at f4 with an ISO of 4000! The amount of light available was very poor...therefore I am extremely happy with the result! I waited in excess of 5 hours at this spot in anticipation of the predator's possible return. Eventually it did - and just in time as we had to leave to make the camp gate time (Kruger National Park).

This image made it to the final round in the recent Nature's Best Windland Smith Rice Awards.

To read the WHOLE story behind this shot, read it on my blog (with many more images):
[link]

This photo is Copyrighted © Morkel Erasmus Photography.

You may share this image as presented here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)