Dinokeng, South Africa, 2026
Yame is the most aesthetically blessed lion in Kevin Richardson’s hugely respected lion sanctuary northeast of Pretoria. He is also the most athletic lion and the easiest to work with. So he wins across all the categories that matter and he is my default lion at Kevin’s these days. But, like all of us, he ages and I know that his time at the top will end soon.
If I work with the light as opposed to into it, my preferred shooting time is the last one hour of sunshine; the setting sun serves to glorify the textural beauty of the lion’s face and bring out every facial detail.
I have long studied the paintings of Dutch master Vermeer and his remarkable ability to use light to render texture; I often think of his work when taking portraits of Yame’s face. I didn’t have a huge amount of depth of field to play with, but I tend to start at the eyes and then give myself some depth in both directions.
An unavoidable issue is that an adult lion has a deep face and there is quite a distance from the nose to the eyes. Keeping both the mouth and eyes sharp, while working at a necessarily fast shutter speed, is a challenge unless you work directly with the sun. 1/1600th of a second at F6.3 at 200 ISO is a lot of light.
The lion’s huge head means that the composition is well served if it is the only subject in the frame. There is really no need for anything else - less is more. I like the cinematic format of this shot.