Young Male Leopard/Kabini#2

[Praveen Siddannavar]

I had seen and photographed him when he was only 5-6 months old, he is growing fast & now he is about 15 months. He is the model boy & one of the boldest leopards at Kabini.

Camera - Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, 500mm + 1.4x TC

Av 6.3
Tv 1/200
ISO 400
EC +0.7 step
Focal length 700mm
Cropped
Jeep's roof top rod support
Date and Time : 27th Jan'12 @ 8:40am

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Simply splendid photograph.Superb pose so nicely captured.

Praveen Bhai, I was looking at your photographs of the same leopard posted on 01.02.2012 and 06.02.2012; particularly the visual recording of the rosettes.In the first one how distinct they appear to be.In today's photograph when the body is stretched,the pattern remaining same,rosettes appear slightly indistinct and little blurred.Here lies the stealth character of a leopard.

"...unlike a tiger,a leopard crossing even open ground at a fast pace is difficult to follow visually,because the effect of movement is to create,not a grey form with contour sharpness,but a grey blur.......I have noticed this both by daylight and by artificial(spotlight) light.This is perhaps of some value to the leopard in its getaway from large animals chasing it,such as gaur and tiger."
-M.Krishnan

Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Super praveen. Best of the series till now. Lovely pose and eye contact. Loved that inquisitive look . R the whiskers on one side missing or is it the angle?

TFS
Roopak

[V S Sankar]

Fantastic picture and the best of the series.Good sighting for Praveen continues in 2012!

As usual nice bit of information from Saktiji and good observation from Roopakji.Where are they?

Regards

[Suraj Sreedhar]

Nice image.Loved the pose,nice that he has got his territory in the same area.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Lovely pose. Great sighting. Nice to see a leopard in the open. Without the out of focus tree in the back it would have been even better. Did you do any noise reduction? Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Thanks guys for the comments, I am glad you liked this image.

Sakti-ji - Thanks for taking the pain in doing a comparison, it is indeed not easy to identify Leopards based on the Rosettes.

Roopak/Shankar - The Leopard does have whiskers but on the left due to the white/off-white patch, the whiskers are not visible. Also As mentioned by Roopak angle can also be another reason.

Suraj - As per my observation he is always seen around the backwaters side.

Sabyasachi - I agree without the OOF tree it would have been great, we didn't change the position of our jeep else the leoard would have disappeared. It did happen later after I had taken plenty of shots, a jeep arrived at the spot and they tried to approach closer and this guy vanished in a flash. I have done minimum NR in LR the slider is at 30.

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Lovely sighting Praveen. This guy seems to have taken a fancy for you. he's started posing now for you :)

[Anand Madabhushi]

Praveen, this is a great capture. The attitude of the subject is well recorded.

Do you think a further crop of about an inch from top would have helped the OOF tree?

Regards

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Anand I would have cropped but that will take away details & induce more noise. Hence kept as is, but thanks for the suggestions. Ideally one needs to get the composition right on the field.