49.4

Marlon du Toit and I spent two afternoons photographing a pack of wild dogs all by ourself in a sandy riverbed in the Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe last week.

I will never forget the 2nd afternoon, when we leopard-crawled for over 40 meters to get within good shooting distance. Just before we had to leave, the Alpha Male got up and stalked towards us, growled a couple of times, took in our scent, and then lied down about 7 meters from us, relaxed again. An absolutely thrilling moment, making my heart skip a few beats!! I was lying on my belly for this one. The light was poor (overcast at sunset) so I had to push the ISO to 4000, and wanted good DOF on the face so had to stop down to f6.3, which left me with a workable shutter speed of 1/320, as long as the dog's movements weren't too quick.

I don't have any noteworthy images in my portfolio of this endangered species, and am so stoked to have come back from Mana Pools with a truckload of images from low angles like this, with an unobstructed view of the canines.