"Moment in the wild"

[Balaji Loganathan]

"Leopards are the most elusive cats in the wild and hard to spot" Knowing that, we started our first safari ride in the evening with Jungle Lodges & Resort Kabini an Amazing place for Nature & lover of big cats; Mr. Venky (Venkatesh) one of my favorite naturalist was with us.
The excitement started to build, when we started driving into the forest, within few minutes of our drive we had the opportunity to sight few herds of elephants on the backwaters of Kabini River & It was a visual treat to watch them on their natural habitat.
Moreover we spotted few birds on the drive & accelerated in search of the Exclusive boutique of Kabini, After 30 mins of driving deep into the forest, a spotted deer raised an alarm call, followed by a langur; soon the forest was filled with deep silence & our confidence of spotting a cat was increasing... we quickly followed the direction of the alarm call to capture the wilderness in the wild
We fixed our focus to finding the big cat and our fingers glued to the shutters to capture the magnificent moment in our camera, though the deep woods camouflaged the presence of any predator, but our ever attentive and experienced driver Mr. Rajesh was able to spot the tail of the big cat carelessly ogling with the branch of a tree and made a silent scream "Leopard on the tree". What you see above is the young male leopard locking its sharp eyes us....
Please follow this page to find on what happened next....
Your comments/critics are welcome.
Location - Kabini | Karnataka | India
Gear used: Canon 40D | 100-400 L USM|
EXIF - Aperture - f5.6,Shutter speed - 1/400 Sec, ISO - 640,Focal Length - 400mm, White Balance - Manual, Handheld

[Mrudul Godbole]

Welcome to IndiaWilds..!!

Nice start with a leopard photograph. Lovely eye contact. Liked the way it is stretched on the tree. I think a vertical composition with more space at the bottom to include the rear paw would have enhanced the composition further. When was this photographed? Thanks for sharing.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice sighting of the leopard during your first safari. Good eye contact. When a leopard moves fast in the open in the evening, one may not even spot it.Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Balaji Loganathan]

@ Mrudul Godbole -
many thanks for your comments!!! will surely improve on the composition aspect...BTW this was recorded on 27th Jan 2013

@Saktipada Panigrahi - Thanks for your comment & agree with you on the moving leopard..

Thank you!!!

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice to see a leopard on top of a tree. The eye contact is very nice.

I agree with Mrudul. You need to give a bit more space, especially at the bottom as the paw has been cut off. The image looks a bit overexposed. You can work on the white balance a bit and reduce the colour temperature. That will help you in containing the overexposed spots a bit. There is also a slight magenta/pink cast.

You can address us by name. No need to add an @ sign infront. It makes it a bit impersonal. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Balaji Loganathan]

Thanks for your comments Sabyasachi Sir!!! shall certainly work towards the suggestion

Apologize for adding @ symbol before the name

[Kaustuv Chatterjee]

Lovely image of the leopard,though a bit over exposed. That can be corrected easily as Sabyasachi points out and also by adjusting levels. Well done to get a clean clear shot!