March 28, 2011
Lion Yawning in Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa

Early in the morning of our second full day in Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa, we were photographing some male greater kudu on one loop in the park when it started to rain. Instead of continuing the loop to head further into the rain, we backtracked to get out of the rain and by doing so ended up driving on a short connecting road that I hadn't planned to take that morning. It was a good thing we did because we came upon a lioness eating at a kudu kill with two males resting nearby. The solid cloud layer provided some nice diffuse light and actually made it possible to photograph them because they would have been on the wrong side of the road had the sun been out.

One of the male lions was only about 10 yds (9m) from us, so I was photographing him with my 70-200 and 2x. I switched to my 500 and 1.4x to see what compositions I could get of just his face, and it wasn't quite tight enough. As I was telling Jan that the lens wasn't really working, the lion yawned. I quickly framed the action and captured my favorite image of the day (below).