This is my favourite all-time shot, although it might be more due to the experience than the photographic quality.


This is the only image on my website that was actually taken using real film (Agfa 200 iso). I used my Olympus OM10. Remarkably, this photo was taken using only a short telephoto: 70mm to 80mm-ish zoom with the aperture stops wide open (flash was not allowed).

This is a totally wild male bengal tiger, about 10 years old in the Bandhavgarh reserve in Madya Pradesh, North-ish India (about 500 miles south of Delhi). It is one of the few pix that I have taken that has done reasonably well in both club and inter-club competitions. It never achieved a 20/20 but did get an 18 in one round of the North West Fed inter-club competition.

Tigers are basically nocturnal and don't tend to move around much during the daytime. Trackers on elephant back set out to find them. After settling down for a snooze, this one got up again and moved off, so we followed on the elephants. The tiger finally found a large mound, about the same height as an elephant's back and rested there, yawning and dozing. The extremely well-trained elephants (who in the wild would be terrified of turnng their unprotected rumps towards a tiger) were backed up so that I was within 7 feet (yes, that's what it said on my lens focussing ring...) or about 2 metres from the end of his nose....and also at the same level.

The mahouts did recognise this tiger, however, as always having been remarkably docile and unconcerned by the presence of people.

I took a whole roll of film, half of which I had to throw away as they were suffering with camera shake...from fear? Well, no, but from excitement, perhaps... In the dense forest, the exposure was only around a thirtieth of a second.

Amazingly, Bunker (as he was called by the mahouts) was quite capable of reciprocating simple eyebrow gestures with me. My elephant was the last to arrive at the scene, and so the mahout and I were there, really close to him, for over five minutes. An incredible experience.

A couple of years afterwards I saw a documentary film taken in Bandhavgarh, where Bunker's dominant position had been usurped by a younger male called Charger... The film crew reported that they had last seen him, looking rather underfed, disappearing into the forest. He was never seen again. Very sad, but at least he didn't get poached!