Tigerscape

[Debasis Bose]

Early winter morning beginning Jan 2015, temperature hovering around 4°C ours was the first jeep on the beaten forest track, looking for the pug marks. While driving through the precinct of Rohini Padao on the main Dhangari-Dhikala road my family and I had a feeling that some strange noise was floating in the air, the driver of gypsy stopped and immediately switched off the ignition to hear what the sound was. The silence was broken by a growl… ‘aaaaaaaaooun…aaaaaaaoungh…..aaaaoungmmm’… unmistakable roar of a tiger, followed by silence. Even the early hour deafening love song of cricket and cicada stopped due to the vibration and infrasonic effect at higher intensities it is possible to feel infra-sound vibrations in various parts of the body. The feel of the magic sound was such that our adrenaline started pumping vigorously; I could hear my own heartbeat. All of us on the gypsy suddenly went motionless in the posture we were in and started staring in the direction of the sound. After few seconds we saw her striped royal majesty slowly maneuvering through the rock bed of seasonal stream called sot in local language. Momentarily time seemed to have stopped when was woken up by an urgent excited call of the guide “woh raha ek aur tiger” and there he was his royal majesty staring at us from about a distance roughly about 60 to 70 meters. Corbett national park is a forest older than time itself because…. if you carefully observe the dead standing tree branching off towards the center of the frame, at the bifurcation on the top an inch below the upper edge about the center of the frame is holding a rock bigger than a size of football that may have rolled down the mighty Himalayas millions of year ago. Inferring that the tree at some point of time during her growing days have caught the rolling stone from the sot during rainy season in her bifurcating branch. Today the tree is just a dead dry structure holding the rock intact that possibly has seen the tree through her lifetime.

The excitement was such that this is one of the best pictures I could get from the lot.

Nikon D 700, Nikor 24-120 F4, shot at 120 @ F4, 1/250 s, ISO 320

[Prasad Dingankar]

Nice scape with two tigers in the frame. The large tree trunk with unique shape is catching the attention. where is the focusing point?
Thanks for sharing

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Fossil in Nature's painting -- wood turning into rock as if after million years. Reminds me of Rabindranath Tagore's many paintings at advanced age. I think, this image in the core of our unknown self questioning -- ' Will Corbett survive another million years !' The tiger (s) is a passer-by..... in the time horizon. Exquisite beauty. Thanks for sharing. SaktiWild

[Mrudul Godbole]

Amazing ways of nature. Such serene and beautiful surroundings. Great that you could get both the tigers in the frame. Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The landscape is awesome. Composition is fine. Focus I guess is on the tree. It is impossible to get both the tigers in focus at f4 and 120mm.

Manually focusing on the first tiger and using a narrow aperture like f8 would have been better. Since you were already at ISO 320, you could have gone up to around 1000 or thereabouts. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Rajbir Oberoi]

lovely sighting, back and front tigers looks amazing, agree with Sabayasachi da on narrower aperture...overall gr8 shot man... TFS

[Debasis Bose]

Focus is on the front tiger and any lower aperture would have increased the shutter opening time, and then being not so good with camera I could not have avoided shake in handheld and excited condition