I’m not sure how this one has passed me by, it’s one of my favourite lion images, but I don’t seem to have really mentioned this one here until now. I took this one early one morning at sunrise on the last day of a trip to the Masai Mara in Kenya in August 2009.

Lions are active mostly at dawn and dusk, and when the light shines at its best too. One morning when there did not appear to be too much on offer, we came upon this male lion and his lioness partner. He was one of a mating pair, shortly after a kill, a little after sunrise. The light breeze and morning light played out some nice texture variations onto his golden mane.

I often try to photograph as low as possible too, this time I was scrunched up on the floor of the vehicle trying for the very lowest point. Then as we were watching he looked up, right through me, just for a few seconds, but time enough for me to catch this one picture.

Taken using a Nikon D300 with 200-400 zoom lens at 400mm, f/5.6, 1/500th, and ISO 200.