On my first trip to Peru in the early 80's, I stayed at a jungle lodge that was raising an ocelot kitten they'd found in the rainforest. Its mother had been killed by poachers, sadly, and when I met "Lady T" (for Tigresa) she was just four months old. The intention of the staff at the lodge was to release the kitten back into the wild when it was old enough. Lady T had definitely acclimated to people. At dinner, the kitten would climb up on my lap and then up on the table and share my meal with me. I was able to take a series of wonderful images, including some shots on the jungle floor for a natural look. All of the pictures had to be taken with flash because the film back then was very slow, the lenses were slow, and the dense rainforest was very dark. At the time, I was using a Mamiya RB 67, and for this image the lens was a Mamiya 250mm f/4.5 (equivalent to a 135mm lens in the full frame digital format). My flash was the huge Metz 60 ct-4 and the film I used was Kodak Ektachrome 64. Everything was manual, so I had to calculate the exposure using the formula: GN = D x f/stop, where GN is the guide number of the flash and D is the distance from the flash to the subject. I've always loved this shot because of the intensity of those captivating blue eyes.
0 Comments