One of my favorite pictures of lions is this battle-scarred male I captured on safari in Kenya. He conveys strength and the wisdom of surviving in the wild for many years. Even though lions are at the top of the food chain, life is tough for them. Combative males, shortages of game, drought, angry elephants, rhinos, and cape buffalo, and poachers make life very diffcult for even the toughest of lions. I took this shot with a Canon 500mm f/4 telephoto plus a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 700mm of focal length. My settings were 1/500, f/8, and 200 ISO. In post-processing, I slightly desaturated the color -- the opposite of what I usually do -- and then I applied a lot of clarity. That added contrast to the midtones, and in the process introduced a gritty look to this portrait.
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