The Spirit of the Puma Photo

Photographer’s Note

Once, in one of my early morning nature walks I found this young puma up in a jacaranda tree. I was both scare and exited but determined to make the shot. As I carefully approached the tree something seemed odd, the cat did not make his move! Something was wrong, it was very unusual. Well, I placed the camera so close to the cat that it placed it ears back and showed me its teeth in a threat display. My heart was in my mouth but I started shooting (24 frames). Finally, I climbed the tree to see if I could determine what was wrong and it did not move. As it turns out it had something wrong with its hind quarters. Unfortunately, we could not help this beautiful animal and weeks later the game wardens of the private wildlife reserve where I work found it dead in the field. Even the top predators can die from an injury. So this picture will perpetuate the puma’s spirit for the world to enjoy. I hope you will enjoy him as much as I did and still do.

loic-jaouen has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

Nina (4613) 2003-01-07 7:25

Great shot Leo and a wonderful story to go with it. Thank you for both. I would be tempted to crop this one a little to remove the out of focus branches. What do you think?

Alisa (17) 2003-01-09 14:02

The light on his face is warm and adds to the calmness of his expression. I would get rid of (clone out) the blurred branches in the forground to draw more attention to gorgous subject. Not sure about the washed out blue. Have you tried this in b&w? Hmm.. that would get rid of the warmth. Maybe more saturation?
AM

rjamin (1169) 2003-01-16 13:13

I agree with previous critiquer to clone out the OOF branch. The right one should be easy to fix.
I like the expression of the cougar face.

CVTJan (1244) 2003-12-03 18:10

Dear Leo, thanks for sharing this :-) I think cropping the top would lose some of the height of the tree, so it is ok as it is (although usually I agree with the earlier written on this). Very detailed picture with good use of DOF and a great story but Please don't risk your life for a photo. You know the story where only a camera was found with pictures of attacking bears on it ?

sponticelli (23) 2004-04-06 22:27

Nice Shot... but it could be better if you adjust the colors and levels in photoshop.

alros (71) 2004-05-12 14:04

Lucky capture and cool story, too bad he was injured. Do you think if the game wardens came earlier they could have helped the young puma?

You are very lucky to be able to take all these photos of beautiful places in South America, it is a dream of mine.

loic-jaouen (204) 2006-10-06 3:48