Leopard from bandhavgarh

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Dear All
Spotted a Leopard pair atop a hillock at the Bandhavgarh national park. This Male was more relaxed and hung around. The female, more reticent briefly made her appearance before vanishing into the undergrowth.

EOS 50 D+ 300f4+ 1.4x II at f 5.6, 1/160, at ISO 800., Handheld.

Look forward to comments.
Cheers
Dipankar

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nicely captured. The conditions look quite tough. Nice eye contact. Its good to see you got the focus right through the bushes in the foreground. The details on the skin look good. I feel you can crop just a little bit from the left to include less of the tree, that would enhance the composition further. Thanks for sharing. Look forward to more from Bandhavgarh.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Dipankar,
Despite all the chaos in bandhavgarh, you got to see a leopard. Can't ask for more. For some reason, I have always missed out on a good leopard sighting in bandhavgarh. Either I have had fleeting glimpses or I reach a minute or two later. In one case, I reached a minute after two leopards got into the bush. I was waiting hardly 100 feet away for leopards. When I reached the place, a foreign tourist was grinning ear to ear, having seen leopard mating. :(

In short, I believe watching a leopard and photographing it in bandhavgarh is tough, as they are always wary of tigers. In this case, the leopard is on the ground. That makes it even better. Was it in A route?

It was good that you increased the ISO to 800, as had some poor light levels to contend with. Wish you had better light. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Nikhilesh Mahakur]

fantastic capture!!
With the high tiger density in Bandhavgarh, their numbers are low and sighting is very very less. Lucky you :)

[Bibhav Behera]

Nice job given the lighting. Mrudul has nicely mentioned how this image could have been better. Thanks for sharing.