{"id":156363,"date":"2015-04-06T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=6b06f7fc74f551b04b6cfbb4819df1ef"},"modified":"2019-12-23T00:53:03","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T11:53:03","slug":"death-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/death-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you spend hours waiting for a specific photo, anticipating and watching for the decisive moment in sweltering heat. Other times you just stumble into the right spot at the right time.<\/p>\n

I wish I could wax lyrical about the planning and preparation that went into capturing this moment, but I can’t. It was a combination of right time\/place and luck (we all need some luck in this thing called wildlife photography!).<\/p>\n

During our 2013 +Wild Eye Great Migration photo safari I hosted with Marlon du Toit, we saw some lions lying in the grass next to the Mara river, and decided to head closer for some portrait photography.<\/p>\n

As we pulled to a stop, to our amazement a lone wildebeest scrambled up the riverbank (having just done a solo crossing we couldn’t see from our vantage point), and the poor thing literally almost tripped over the lions.<\/p>\n

The largest female of the small pride wasted no time in pouncing on the unfortunate ungulate, and a lengthy struggle ensued during which we were privy to the emotional dance of death between these species that occurs during the Great Migration.<\/p>\n

This particular wildebeest didn’t seem to want to give up and kept struggling to escape his attackers, but to no avail.<\/p>\n

We were very close to the action, and shooting with a 500mm lens forced me to compose a little out-of-the-box, but I liked how it came out!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Nikon D3s | Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II | f8.0 | 1\/1250 SS | ISO-1400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0I also converted it to monochrome, and I like it better in that medium. What do you think??<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Nikon D3s | Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II | f8.0 | 1\/1250 SS | ISO-1400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let me know which you prefer by dropping a comment below.Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a great week.<\/p>\n

If you would like to join us in the Mara Triangle this year for an awesome photographic adventure, then check out THIS page.<\/p>\n

If you would like to purchase this tone version as a limited edition fine art print for your office or home, mail me: morkel@morkelerasmus.comMorkel Erasmus<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nGet Your FREE Logo Here<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you spend hours waiting for a specific photo, anticipating and watching for the decisive moment in sweltering heat. Other times you just stumble into the right spot at the right time. I wish I could wax lyrical about the planning and preparation that went into capturing this moment, but I can’t. It was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":2195989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-cBkbGS6J1oA\/VRjTsF85-3I\/AAAAAAAAl2A\/k4FIVFszU-Q\/s1600\/lion_kill_3_MasaiMara_2013.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[2440,2623,5471,7841],"class_list":["post-156363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-lion","tag-morkel-erasmus","tag-wildebeest","tag-wildlife-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2195989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}