When photographing wildlife, like this wild jaguar in the Pantanal region of Brazil, I like to get as low as possible. This gives the animals greater stature, and it also makes for a more intimate portrait. In addition, an eye-level experience with a powerful animal is breathtaking. I laid down in the boat to shoot as close to water level as I could. This was not the most comfortable position, especially since I was shooting with a 500mm f/4 lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter, but comfort was secondary to getting the best shot. The disadvantage, though, of doing this was that the foreground water became out of focus. I don't like out of focus foregrounds in most cases, but in this situation there was nothing I could do. Using a small lens aperture wasn't an option without raising the ISO extremely high. I could always crop the image and eliminate the blurred water, but I only crop when absolutely necessary. My settings were 1/1000, f/9, 1600 ISO, and I had 700mm of focal length.
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