Lion | Gir

[Bhargava Srivari]

Made my maiden trip to Sasan gir; processed this while awaiting in a hotel lobby before proceeding to the airport to catch our flight back to Hyderabad :)
We found this handsome fella resting by the Bhavnagar road that cuts through the jungle. The trip ended on a high with two males, and two prides of 6 and 8 females each.

f/4, ISO 400, 1/250sec, EV 0, full frame, evaluative metering.
canon EOS 7D, canon EF 300 f/2.8 L IS II USM

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The mane has come out well along with the scars in the face.

The composition with the out of focus dead tree trunk on the left and branch overhead along with the cutoff hind portion makes this pretty cramped. Perhaps, it is a reflection of the ground reality of lions being confined within a small territory with the state Govt. not agreeing for relocating lions.

Sabyasachi
PS: When one starts looking at the thumbnails of the images posted here, most of the images have been post-processed with similar pumped up colour temperatures. One can see the falacy of it.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Good eye contact. The low angle looks nice. As you were quite close, you could have composed to include just the face, so the composition would look wider. Thanks for sharing.

[Supreet Sahoo]

Although a little tight I really like the composition here. Its so unfair that the male lions in our country are relatively smaller than their African cousins but what can we do about it !! Hope you had a good overall trip. Would be interesting to know how many records of birds you got in Gir.

Tfs
Supreet

[Suraj Sreedhar]

Groud level shot looks nice & makes the subject appear big.Hope it was looking towards you.
Thanks for Sharing.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Good details of the face.Two features specific to Asiatic Lion are evident.I agree with Madam Mrudul that a composition consisting only the face might have been tried.
We promote African Lion,but Asiatic Lion ranks high with some outstanding features.Wish colours been natural.
Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Nice image Bhargava. Agree with the comments above, but I would personally not prefer to compare both the species. They're both lovely in their own ways. Wish the composition was less tighter. The heat must have taken its toll I guess, even the big guy looks beaten by it.Thanks for sharing.

[Prashanth Gokul Dwarapu]

Indian lions are not smaller than their African cousins, they look smaller because of their mane or the lack of it, while African males have a luxuriant growth of mane which adds to their regal looks our lions comparitively have very little mane.

The theory goes that Indian lions evolved in scrub forests while their African counterparts evolved in open plains and hence the growth of their respective manes differs vastly.