How many hours have you sat waiting for a “FLAT” cat like this? The question is, what to do while waiting for a sleeping cat to wake up?
I am a firm believer in that if you put the time in, your patience with nature will reward you in one way or another.
I know I have collectively sat many, MANY hours waiting. Sadly we do not have control over these wild animals and the only thing you can do is to sit and wait.
Getting great images of a big powerful cat is great, it really is, but there is more to a safari than just an image. By nature many of us, including myself can lack patience at times, having said that it is often these moments that we are waiting for an animal to wake up that we learn the most. It also allows us the time to take in how fortunate we are to be in the position to have these experiences.
In doing this you can take the opportunity to take in everything that is happening around you, learn, ask your guide questions and sometimes you get lucky and they get up but sometimes they don’t.
That’s just unfortunately the way it works. Take it or leave it!
Sitting in a sighting like this where lions or leopards are motionless does not mean you need to put your camera away either. This is a great opportunity to work on your creativity and try create different images. Worst case scenario is that you will just delete those images, BUT you just might be surprised at the outcome.
I am sure by now you have figured that this blog is not really a “photography tip” blog.
It is more of a basic “field tip” blog so that the next time you sit with sleeping cats you know when to get yourself, your gear and your settings ready.
You have now been sitting with a pride of sleeping lions or a sleeping leopard for two hours with no signs of life. A tad frustrating I know, then you see these sleeping cats start doing this
The cats yawning like this are not them showing off their impressive teeth to us but just like us, they yawn to take in a heap of air to supply their “sleepy” brains with enough oxygen in order to wake up.
When you see this start happening, get ready! At times they yawn once or twice and fall over to sleep again but more than likely they get up and get active!
Now you know one thing to look for out in the field while sitting with sleeping cats in order to make sure you bank the shot.
Until next time,
Trevor
