Michael Wilkins
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A male white lion with pale blue eyes stares straight at the camera through a gap in out-of-focus thornbush.

White Lion, Watching

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

1D X Mark II, 400 millimetres, f 5.6, 1/500 of a second, ISO 800

The stare found us before we found him.

Pumba's white lions are the reason I carried the long lens all week. This male was bedded down deep in thornbush, and everything between us reads as smudges of acacia and yellow blossom. The only sharp thing in the frame is that pale-blue stare. I kept the focus point on his near eye and let the bush swallow everything else.

Part of Pumba, a series.