The intensity of the stare

When you are in an open vehicle and a lion looks right into your eyes, you know what he's thinking. It has to be something like, "I wonder if that guy would taste good with a little salt and pepper or maybe some Tabasco sauce!" It is chilling, actually, how predators have such intensity in their expressions when they stare at you. This is one of my favorite pictures from Africa because of the way the lion is looking at me even though he's lying in the grass, and also because the lighting works so well. Patchy light is usually something to avoid, but in this case it directs all of our attention to the cat's face and that's the focal point of the image. Notice how the entire eye is illuminated and there is no shadow on the iris at all. That tells you the sun was fairly low in the sky, and this is one of the advantages of shooting at or near sunrise and sunset. The eyes of animals are their most intense. My settings were 1/500, f/11, 250 ISO, and I used a 70-200mm lens set to 175mm because the safari vehicle I was in was so close to the lion.