Bhargava Srivari
29-06-2011, 10:41 AM
It felt like ecstacy to sight a tiger after a long 3months. After my two visits to bandipur and one to kabini in a month or so failed to yield sightings, tadoba did not disappoint. It was zero-light conditions, overcast skies,but at least, there was a sighting :) Look at the exif and you'll know the light I was dealing with! And with the mediocre shooting techniques I possess, even a record shot at 1/25sec is personally acceptable :)
As for the story behind the sighting, we were the first ones to enter through the mohurli gate at precisely 5:55 am. Five minutes later, when I was shooting a buzzard, a horde of vehicles came from behind and drove straight to teliya dam. Our driver thogh, decided that we should try the yenbodi area first. So, leaving alone all the otehr behicles, we drove to yenbodi only to find this tigress (she also has cubs, our guide told) walk into the open from behind the bamboo seen in the image and was looking at us with nervousness writeen all over her face- probably a result of her young cubs closeby who haven't yet seen humans! With the same nervousness, she walked towards us with great majesty, and again hid gerself behind a bamboo, this time only hardly 6-7m from our gypsy. Every now and then, she would peep from behind the bush, but at ISO 6400, the shutter speed was a frighteningly low 1/12sec, and getting even record shots was out of question for me. Barely a couple of min later, she boldly walked across the track and disappeared into the undergrowth.
f5.6, 1/25sec, ISO 3200, EV 0, 400mm,eval metering, subject distance: 82m
canon 60D, canon 100-400 L IS USM
As for the story behind the sighting, we were the first ones to enter through the mohurli gate at precisely 5:55 am. Five minutes later, when I was shooting a buzzard, a horde of vehicles came from behind and drove straight to teliya dam. Our driver thogh, decided that we should try the yenbodi area first. So, leaving alone all the otehr behicles, we drove to yenbodi only to find this tigress (she also has cubs, our guide told) walk into the open from behind the bamboo seen in the image and was looking at us with nervousness writeen all over her face- probably a result of her young cubs closeby who haven't yet seen humans! With the same nervousness, she walked towards us with great majesty, and again hid gerself behind a bamboo, this time only hardly 6-7m from our gypsy. Every now and then, she would peep from behind the bush, but at ISO 6400, the shutter speed was a frighteningly low 1/12sec, and getting even record shots was out of question for me. Barely a couple of min later, she boldly walked across the track and disappeared into the undergrowth.
f5.6, 1/25sec, ISO 3200, EV 0, 400mm,eval metering, subject distance: 82m
canon 60D, canon 100-400 L IS USM