As many of you know I live close to the San Diego Wild Animal Park in Escondido and take full advantage of shooting both the captive and natural wildlife that live there. This last weekend I had the special treat of being able to observe the running of one of the Cheetahs. As usual, shooting was a tradeoff. The morning was completely overcast so that the light was marginal for shooting animals in action. Because of the speed of the cheetah I had to shoot with pretty fast shutter speed (>1/1000) which required that I shoot at ISO800 and f5.6. However, because it was rather cold and gray, the cheetah did not overheat on the first pass and I got to shoot a second run.

Anyway this was an awesome display of speed and I was really impressed. Cheetahs can get up to 30+ mph in about 10 meters and on these runs they get to about 50. Here are a few of the better images I was able to get.