Golden Rosettes

This photograph took four days to get, and I mean that quite literally. We were staying at Ikuka Camp in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania - a wild, underrated area that's genuinely one of the best places in the country for leopard density. Four days of searching, of fresh tracks and alarm calls and nothing to show for it.

Then, one late morning, scanning a rocky kopje outcrop, there she was: a young female leopard, fast asleep under a bush,. It was already warm by then, heading toward the stillness of midday, and she had absolutely no intention of moving. We sat with her for over an hour, hoping, before admitting defeat and heading back to camp for lunch.

We came straight back out afterwards. Finding her again took a bit of searching and thankfully some worried guinea fowl alerted us to her position. This time we made a decision: we were staying with her for the whole afternoon and evening, whatever happened. For hours, she barely stirred. Then, just as the light began to hit that 'golden hour', she got up.

She climbed onto the rocks and began traversing across them, and the light caught her rosettes in a way that was genuinely breathtaking. This is the frame from that moment. Not long after, she dropped into a stalk, locked onto the same guinea fowl that had betrayed her position earlier, and went hunting. She didn't catch them, but she came close enough that for a few seconds nobody in the vehicle was breathing. It remains one of the most incredible evenings I have ever spent in the presence of an animal, and I think you can feel some of that in the photograph - the calm before, and the gold that followed.