Michael Wilkins
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A male lion rests his head on the ground in short grass, one eye half open, mane spilling forward over his ear.

Lion at Rest

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

1D X Mark II, 400 millimetres, f 5.6, 1/250 of a second, ISO 160

Flat out, and still watching.

Lions rest up to twenty hours a day, and this is what most of a lion's life actually looks like: head down in the grass, jaw slack, one eye kept fractionally open in our direction. I filled the frame with the head and left room on the right for the grass he was ignoring. He never moved.