Michael Wilkins
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Close portrait of a cheetah with rain-spiked fur and amber eyes, tear lines running dark down its face.

Cheetah in the Rain

Pumba Game Reserve, Eastern Cape, South Africa · December 2022

1D X Mark II, 200 millimetres, f 5.6, 1/1000 of a second, ISO 400

Rain flattens everything except the eyes.

A grey, wet morning, and the drizzle clumped her fur into spikes. Rain mutes a cheetah's colours but it does something better to the eyes — everything around them goes soft and dark, and the amber sits there burning. Shot tight at the long end, exposed for the face, background left to dissolve.

Part of Pumba, a series.