Longleat’s Tiger

If your passion is nature photography, and you are doing this 3 or 4 days a week, what do you do to celebrate a big birthday? Find something much bigger to photograph of course and it just so happens that Longleat is about an hour away from home. It’s several years since I was last there and I found on their website that they were offering amazing summer photographic opportunities. With just a few days left in September we booked two of the few remaining places. This photographic experience was way beyond our expectations, it was brilliant.

A sheep’s head has been put out for the Tiger and we arrive in the Longleat vehicle maybe 15 yards away from it. The Tiger sees it and comes bounding toward its quarry and therefore towards us. The following pictures are just a few of those I took, following the Tiger as it moved around to find its preferred spot to enjoy the delicacy.

We were so much closer to the animals that I had expected and my zoom lens was not necessary. You can see the heavy rain and you can see the confines of the Tiger’s environment. Whilst I would have loved to have been on a jeep in Botswana taking these pictures, that is not going to happen. It’s important that the animal’s environment is properly represented, so no post processing to take out fences etc. on these pictures.