The best place to see meerkats in the wild is Namibia. They stick close to their den, so if you can spot where they live, it's easy to photograph their activities. I took this picture about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and this is the time when the light starts to become attractive again after the midday harshness of an overhead sun. I used a 300mm f/2.8 lens for this shot, and my settings were 1/1250 (so I could freeze the fast movements of the animals), f/5.6, and 250 ISO. Notice the natural catchlight in the eye from the sun. It is off-center in the eye. When photographers use on-camera flash to simulate this, it never looks as natural because the artificial dot of light is centered in the pupil. In my opinion, this looks exactly the opposite of what you want -- completely unnatural.
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