Last filming day! Last chance to get any bonus footage to bring back home… decided to head straight to the leopard cub viewing location again, so see if I could capture any more interesting behaviour between the cubs and the mother and the cubs, seeing as the chances of a viewing were high – they’ve been seen every morning apart from one. Read more
Probably the most disappointing day of the shoot – there always has to be a day like this, when nothing seems to go your way and it comparison with the other days, which have largely been very productive, today really fell below par! Read more
The primary focus this morning was to get back out to the same opening to see the rock face as yesterday morning – the glimpse of three young cubs and their mother was enough to send any wildlife cameraman or photographer there with blinkers on. Read more
A very good day for leopard spotting! Highlight of the morning session was seeing a glimpse of not two, but three young leopard cubs and their mother depart a crevice in a rock face, which is where they are currently living. According to our fixer, this is the third different set of cubs he’s photographed in this very location, one would assume all from the same mother, as the location clearly suits whichever female is there. Read more
As with any shoot, the need to film GV’s (General Views i.e. scenery and location shots) is essential and this is no different – time needs setting aside to get these important shots for the edit, to break up the sequences and provide the natural breathing space… And of course to make the location look as stunning as possible! Read more
A double dose of daytime leopards! For the first time during our mega early starts, it really paid off how we wanted it too – using our night vision cameras followed by the daytime camera. We spotted a lone male on the plains and took a laying position on the other side of a bank and stayed there until the sun came up. That was my cue to take over from Howard and the starlight and get the dawn shots in colour. As the changeover took place, it got up and trotted along the bank, behind a bushy tree. Read more
Yesterday afternoon’s highlight was seeing a peacock displaying to the hens in his vicinity – a shameless show of masculinity, but he didn’t have any takers and departed with his feathers (beautiful as they may be) between his legs. Read more
So, today was the day we all got up at 3am to get into the park nice and early, a good couple of hours before dawn to see if our night vision cameras (starlight, infra red and thermal) could capture footage from a time of day (or rather, night) no other film crew in Yala has previously had the access or the capabilities of doing so. Read more
Today, certainly this morning was much the same as yesterday morning – got out and headed straight to ‘Croc One’, a waterhole with a good number of crocodiles in (I counted 23 in the area I was filming). No signs of leopards en route, but did stop off to catch a particularly beautiful sunrise. Read more
A morning of reptilians. Oh yeah, from yesterday, the guys didn’t have any luck finding the leopards again at the kill site, assumption is that now they’ve fed they’re not going to be quite so out and about… or on the other hand, they were just unlucky and didn’t find them! Read more
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