Wild African dogs sparring

Frans captured this shot of two wild dogs circling each other and literally nipping at each other’s heels in the Luangwa Valley. “It could potentially be lethal behaviour if they were serious, because nipping at the heel of prey is what helps to bring it down, but here it’s just play. What I like about the image is that it’s hard to make heads or tails of it.”

Although it might not at first appear as technically demanding a shot as, say, capturing a cheetah with legs splayed wide mid-sprint, there’s a lot going on here. Timing the shot to get that perfect central positioning and freezing the peak moment of behaviour is a challenge, compounded by the fact that Frans was having to follow the action through a very long lens – a 600mm f/4 attached to a D2X, giving the full-frame equivalent of 900mm. Then there’s the added complication of flash.

“I made the image at the end of the day and there wasn’t a lot of light, but you can just make out the effect of a fill flash. It’s a technique that I use regularly to extend my ability to work into twilight times, whether that’s in the morning or the evening. This is an image captured digitally so, of course, I could have increased my ISO. Modern cameras are amazing when it comes to that – up to a point, but after that you get a lot more noise. But I like the effect of mixing ambient light with projected light, and it leads to better highlights, because the more reflective surfaces in your image will pop out, so to speak.”