Hello everyone, apologies for the silence but I've been to India for two weeks then had a mad dash to reach the Photography Show. I literally landed from Delhi at 2.10pm and walked onto stage at 3.30 pm to setup my talk, thanks KLM for getting me there. It was great to see so many of you at the show and thanks so much for the support as all the talks were completely rammed. Mine seemed good with a nice reaction after - I always try to present with a mix of entertainment, inspiration and good tips that anyone can use. 

Perhaps the most fun was meeting the dancers from the Birmingham Royal Ballet and watching master photographer and fellow ambassador Clive Booth shoot them. Above you can see principal dancer (and great photographer) Tyrone in his Beauty and the Beast mask (no jokes please) and on the right Clive working on one of his stunning shots. Anyway it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the whole event, especially as my lovely daughter got to see Daddy present for the first time and even managed to stay awake for 15 minutes of it!

Enough waffle bring on the images Rouse. I did my first Mara safari for a while in January and it went so well, great clients, awesome camp and drivers and wow the wildlife really gave us a show. I have always loved lions and over the past few years have built up a great collection of them I think. There are so many shots of lions published everyday that I've become determined to take something different from everyone else. Of course I can only take what I see, and that is limited by the fact that I don't spend as long in Africa as others, but I'm usually pretty lucky which makes up for it. So here's a few of the lion images we shot during our safari....

An amazing morning this one as we found both brothers walking in a great area in early red light. Really beautiful lion pictures I think, very simple, aperture set to f5.6 to keep the background as diffuse as possible. Note that all the flies are still there, they are wild lions with wild flies and that's part of the image!

We got so lucky with lion cubs. Often they are in long grass and tough to see, this time they were in a very good place and seemed very bold. It was great fun to watch them jump around everywhere, they were having an awesome time. I started off with the EOS R but after a while knew that I needed the raw speed of the 1DX2 so swapped to that and filled my boots. All of these above had ISO's of either 800 or 1600 to keep the shutter speed high. Nothing worse than blurred cubs and to show that here's some more lovelies!!!

Back on the EOS R again for the two shots above, long lens work with the 500mm and the 1.4x converter, I shot at f8 for better sharpness and used the immense pixel size of the R to crop in some more whilst retaining a good size for printing. I have tons more but I think you get the idea for now, they were ace!!

Now we didn't get any hunt action, and try as I might I got few atmospheric images apart from these three...

I really like the last one and it's give me some ideas for my next book. So that's it for this week, hope you enjoyed the lions, as always I try to keep it down to a 5 minute read. BUT before you go here's a very important message so please read and support...

Remembering Lions

Remembering Lions will be the 4th book in the acclaimed wildlife series which has so far raised £460,000/$600,000 USD for conservation.

Revered throughout the world and usually the number one attraction on any safari, few people realise quite the trouble that lions are in. Their populations have declined by half in just a quarter of a century. Once found on almost every continent, the lion is now confined to the sub-Sahara in Africa (Panthera leo) and in the Gir Sanctuary, Gujarat State, India (Panthera persica). Lions are threatened by poachers, hunters, diseases and in-breeding but the biggest threat of all is the loss of habitat and conflict with humans. Put simply, lions need space to roam and without that they will be lost.

A number of photographers (including yours truly) were asked to donate images to the book and everyone did so without hesitation. The cover you see here is by the great Federico Veronisi. 

Now the crowd funding finishes this Sunday so you still have the chance to support this amazing project and lion conservation by getting this great book and other cool lion stuff. So click here for the fundraising page!