Exhibition closes

December 20, 2009

It has been a very busy month for me but my exhibition has now come to an end and things are quietening down just in time for Christmas. The exhibition was a great success – it was titled ‘Living Luangwa’ and featured 50 of my favourite images from my last 4 years work in the Luangwa valley. Here are a few of the most popular photographs although seeing them at web size doesn’t do them justice – printed large, framed and lit well makes all the difference..

Hollywood

Clash of the Titans

Kaingo

Broken Mopane

Kakuli

Milky way

Making waves

Geronimo!

Wet feet

Lashes

Skimming

Content Copyright Patrick Bentley Photography

Spots!

October 10, 2009

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Content Copyright Patrick Bentley Photography

Thirsty leopard

September 5, 2009

It can be tough getting good images of leopards in daylight as they are often in the shade or hidden away in thick vegetation – so to have one walking around in the early morning sunlight today was a wonderful sight. When I came across this young female she had been feeding on her kill in a dense combretum thicket and was heading down to a nearby lagoon for a drink.

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Once she had quenched her thirst she jumped over the water and headed off into the bush behind me – a lovely sighting.

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Content Copyright Patrick Bentley Photography

Night-time leopard

August 22, 2009

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The leopard sightings this year have not been as good as usual until a couple weeks ago when they suddenly started to improve. This image is of a lovely female that was walking around near camp last night calling for her cub. We stayed with her for at least an hour but there was no sign of the cub..

Content Copyright Patrick Bentley Photography

He was a shy young male that I found this morning hiding under a bush and watching his kill being devoured by a hyaena. I sat and watched for nearly an hour while the hyaena polished off a huge amount of the kill – a large puku ram. Eventually the hyaena sloped off with a large chunk of meat and it’s belly dragging on the ground! The leopard quickly came out of hiding, grabbed what was left and with incredible strength pulled it about a hundred metres into some very thick combretum bushes.

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Content Copyright Patrick Bentley Photography

Leopard portrait

March 19, 2009

I have been taking advantage of the bad weather and slowly wading my way through last season’s images. As usual I have deleted a huge number and am now onto processing the remainder for prints, stock etc. The last few days has been leopards – here is a portrait shot of a beautiful female from today’s files.

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Content Copyright Patrick Bentley Photography

Leopard kill

October 27, 2008

Although the game viewing is excellent at the moment our leopard sightings have dropped quite a lot in the last few weeks. I think it might be due to the heat as this is often the case at this time of the year with the leopards only becoming active later at night. There is also a lot of lion activity in the area which seems to make them more cautious.

We came across this small female leopard hunting some impala out on an open plain. She soon made a kill but didn’t want to risk having it stolen by hyaenas and so quickly dragged it away and up the nearest tree. This was quite a struggle as the impala was easily the same size and probably heavier than the leopard…

Content Copyright Patrick Bentley Photography