Getting an eye-level shot of an animal while on safari isn't easy because you always shoot from a vehicle, for protection, and this positions you several feet above the ground. When an animal is in a low crouch, like you see here with this young cheetah, there are only two ways to capture this kind of intimate portrait: 1) If the animal is relatively far away and you use a 500mm or 600mm lens (plus a teleconverter if needed), the lens will be parallel with the ground and the resulting portrait will look like you were shooting at eye-level, or 2) the animal was on a rise, and this brings the subject up to the level of your lens. Cheetahs, for example, are often seen on termite mounds so they can see further and spot game. That gives you the chance to get a powerful portrait without the problem of shooting downward. My settings for this picture were 1/320, f/4.5, 200 ISO, and I used a 500mm lens.
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