READER PHOTOS
A leopard in the Kruger, the Mnweni Pinnacles in the Drakensberg, a buffalo in Botswana… Did your photo make the cut this month?
DAVID MCINROY
Canon EOS 1Dx Mark II 600 mm Canon lens with 1.4x converter
DAVID WRITES: We stayed at Biyamiti Bushveld Camp in the Kruger Park for 10 days. One day we drove to Lower Sabie where my wife purchased the September 2018 issue of go! Back at Biyamiti, I browsed through the magazine and came across a letter written by reader Rian Boshoff (p 12, go! #147). Rian had seen a leopard cub in the Kruger, and he remarked that it was the kind of sighting you’d expect from a place like Sabi Sand, yet the Kruger Park had delivered. Full of inspiration, we went for a drive that afternoon along the stretch of sandy road next to the Biyamiti River, which is reserved for guests of the camp. I was searching the branches for a leopard, hoping that I would be as lucky as Rian. On our way back, about 3 km from camp, I spotted a tail hanging from a branch – a leopard!
TOAST SAYS: Isn’t this a cool story? Sometimes the universe plays along, the planets align (or maybe the leopard and the tree align) and your lucky day comes around. David, I must admit: I’m so jealous of this amazing photo of yours! I’ve lost track of how many hours I’ve spent scanning trees for a leopard… I did actually see a leopard in a tree once, in the Serengeti, but it was too far away for a decent photo. The angle was wrong, the light was wrong, the leopard was obscured by branches… Everything that went wrong for me that day went right for David. The branch offers an uncluttered pedestal for the princely leopard – there’s no distracting background or foreground. The angle is right, too. Notice how clear and obvious the outline of the leopard is – it’s unmistakably a leopard, even at first glance, and would have worked just as well in silhouette. To top it off, the leopard yawned! Because the light was fading, David increased his ISO to a whopping 6 400 to accommodate a shutter speed of 1/250 second. It’s not the kind of thing you would have got away with in the days of film; thank goodness for the modern ease of digital photography. Well done David, you’re our winner this month!