Tiger Cubs

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Dear All,
They came out of the confines of the forest to blatantly plant themselves on a rather busy jungle track, the excuse being the comfort of the tiny puddle on the road. The ensuing melee of stranded vehicles was to die for, specially if you are at the head of the queue, with four 9 month old cubs frolicking hardly 5 yards away. These are the Telia cubs from the Tadoba- Andhari Tiger reserve in central India, the boldest and the most unabashedly exhibitionist wild tigers I have ever encountered.

5DII + 300 F4 at f5.6,1/250, ISO 200

Look forward to comments

Cheers
Dipankar

[Gajanan Bapat]

Simply Gr8 shoot, can you convey me location of TATR?
Thanks for sharing

Gajanan Bapat

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Wow!

I have seen many images of tiger cubs jumping in the cement tubs in Tadoba. This beats all of those. I love the reflection and the expressions. How many vehicles were lined up behind you? Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Simply amazing to see 4 tiger cubs on the road. Its nice that you included the reflection. The vertical composition looks nice. How long was the sighting. Thanks for sharing.

[Prasad Dingankar]

Lovely sighting this for sure, wish more DOF as to get most of them in focus... Sharp capture nevertheless ... nice reflection as well...
Thanks for sharing

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Dear Sabyasachi,
From the wailing sounds of photographers with big toys from behind me, I guess a sizable number...!!! But i guess we were very lucky for the fact that there were no vehicle in the backdrop. These cubs were a fixture in this spot for a whole day and several people got to enjoy the frolicking cubs but mostly with a stark coloured car in the background (tadoba allows private cars and all colors of gypsys ). I suppose i was more lucky in that respect.

I found the composition a bit of a challenge principally due to the presence of the patch of water. I tried a little lower angle as well but the still water made the reflection evident and cutting it out made it very noticable. I did wait if the cubs would stir the water and take the reflection out of the equation, that did not happen. Ideally I would have preferred a landscape here with the fourth cub completely visible, but being on a prime could not take that + the reflection.

Prasad,
The thought did occur to me, but the cubs were about 20 feet apart, that kind of DOF was not possible.

Cheers
Dipankar

[Bhargava Srivari]

Very nice. The reflection makes this image for me. If there was room to give a li'l more space to the right, this image would have been more complete. If I haven't spoilt my menory, you are the 11th photographer from whom I have seen images from this sighting. I do not think it was even remotely possible to get all of them in focus; given that, you may have even used your lens at the widest aperture to get a higher shutter speed and it wouldn't have really made a lot of difference.

tfs

[Praveen Siddannavar]

By far one of the best images from Tadoba, Well done Dipankar! In my view the OOF cubs add more interest to this image, the reflections have come out well. The cub in focus is standing out & looks good, except that you may want to reduce sharpening a bit.
tfs

[Rajeev Khanna]

ab dil mange more superb

[Anand Madabhushi]

Excellent composition.