Michael Wilkins
Menu
Close photograph of a cheetah walking directly toward the camera, head filling the frame, amber eyes fixed forward with the dark tear-lines running down its face.

Straight Down the Barrel

Pumba Game Reserve, South Africa · December 2022

1D X Mark II, 330 millimetres, f 5.6, 1/1000 of a second, ISO 500

The tear lines are sun-glare stripes. They also make the stare.

Walking straight at the vehicle, unbothered, until the head filled the frame. Those dark lines running from the eyes down to the mouth are functional — they cut sun glare the way an athlete's face paint does — but they also draw every line in the picture back to the eyes, which is why a cheetah portrait works front-on and almost nothing else does. Long lens, wide open, no crop.