Breakfast

I captured this giant river otter in the Pantanal region of Brazil just after sunrise. I tried to get as low as possible for this intimate angle, so I was lying on the bottom of the boat and shooting just over the gunwale, i.e. the edge of the boat which was about 18 inches above the surface of the river. My camera settings had been chosen for large birds in flight, which was my main focus this morning, but that was a good thing because that enabled me to freeze the action and the water drops in this picture. I find two things particularly interesting about this image. First, the formation of the water drops approximates an S curve, and the otter is looking at me even though the fish was still struggling in its mouth. My settings were 1/2000, f/5.6, and 3200 ISO. I used a Canon 500mm f/4 telephoto plus a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 700mm of focal length to take this uncropped image.