The Longing...

[sgiedne]

I took this shot while on a safari two days back. This lioness here was actually free to go off into the jungle while its cub(in the BG, inside the enclosure) was not. Despite the fact that it could actually walk off, it stayed with its cub, longing to get together with it. It was in that place when i began the safari and was right there when i came back, after some two hours...got me a whole lot depressed.

In this pic, i had a hard time deciding what to focus. I know its usually the eyes you go for, but this is what i got as i had that cub to take care of too. Please let me know if there is a better way of taking this photo. Any other suggestions, critiques are all most welcome.

Shutter speed : 1/250
aperture : f/5.8
ISO : 100
focal length : 150mm

Now, im kind of getting the feeling that i should have got a little more DOF.

[Vernian]

That's a sad story - do you perhaps know why the cub was kept inside the cage?

Telling a story in a photo is not easy and I think you've given it a great go.

The lioness is well done- and the fact that there's not really enough shade in the middle of the day here adds to the feel that she could be somewhere else, but is tied to be here for some reason.

Your photo is quite busy - I see parts of another two lions in the cage with the cub and that's a little distracting because they're only partially there and in some ways pulls my eye away from the main subjects to try and work out what is going on. I gather it was not a very large enclosure where you could wait until the other animals moved off a little?

I love the cub looking straight at the camera, its a real shame the bars hides his eyes. Would it have been possible to shift just a little so his eye was between the bars? I realise the bars would then go straight through the middle of his face, but the bars are central to the story so that should be ok.

Was the cage slightly tilted with regards to the ground? The bars are not quite vertical and it feels a bit odd.

I would rotate the photo to get the bars right (I know the lioness is then not perfectly horizontal, but it looks better to me that way) Then crop it quite a bit closer so that neither of the heads of the other 2 lions can be seen and closer to the lioness' front paws so the fact that you didn't get all of her rump in isn't quite so obvious. That also brings the focus more clearly to the lioness and her cub.

Well done in seeing the potential in this one.