I came upon this pride of lions in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya. The background forest, consisting mostly of yellow fever acacia trees, is very busy. It detracts from the lions, but my feeling about this picture is 1) the landscape aspect of the image realistically shows what a large part of this national park looks like, and 2) the lions themselves are comical in the way they are resting and sleeping with such abandon that the background is acceptable in this instance. I actually tried blurring the background in Photoshop, but I didn’t like it. In art, there are always exceptions. I shot this with a Canon 500mm, and the settings were 1/250, f/4, and 400 ISO. A faster shutter speed would have been better, but in 2007 when this was taken, ISO settings above 1000 were unacceptably noisy. I opted for a lower ISO in lieu of a faster shutter. I rested the long lens on a bean bag in the Land Rover for stability.
0 Comments