March 10, 2011
Impala and Leopard in Kruger National Park, South Africa

On our ninth full day in Kruger National Park, South Africa, we moved from the Satara Rest Camp to the Pretoriuskop Rest Camp. My favorite image of the day is of two young impala grooming. They were backlit, and the uniform dry grass behind them makes the image work. My favorite experience of the day was finding a leopard by the side of the road. It's not too common to see a leopard in Kruger National Park, and I had never seen such a large leopard before — he was huge! Yes, it was a male, and he was busy marking territory along the side of the road. The light wasn't very good in the early afternoon, so the image above was created from one RAW file processed twice in order to bring out detail in the highlights and then combined by hand in Photoshop.