This was one of the more memorable moments from last year’s Patagonia tour. We were surrounded by a few different pumas (which had been coming in to feed on a series of kills they had made), when another cat showed up high atop a nearby cliff.
My clients’ attention was a bit divided, understandably, due to all the cat activity. These were all females, one a mother to several litters, with some of the other cats being her offspring, so the atmosphere was a bit more tolerant when it came to sharing food than it might have been otherwise.
As it turned out, only myself and one other client really paid attention to this distant cat—a youngster—and when I saw it eyeing a nearby Andean Condor (also attracted to the carcasses below), I figured it might be naive enough to try something like this. Of course, it had no chance, and the condor took off. My client actually nabbed what I consider a more aesthetically pleasing shot, capturing the condor as it circled back past the forlorn puma, but I was happy to capture a moment of peak action.
I’m looking forward to getting back down to Chile with this year’s group to see what transpires.
Canon R5
Canon 600mm
ISO 800
1/1600th
f/5.6
Max
(Uploaded a slightly larger-than-normal file for viewing, given the small details.)
Type of Critique Requested
- Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
- Conceptual: Feedback on the message and story conveyed by the image.
- Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.