“I thought I could never possibly choose a favourite animal to photograph, but I would have to say the leopard. Not only do their spots, eyes and silhouettes strike fear and breathtaking beauty in our hearts, but they are also cunning.

They have the largest distributions of all of our planet’s 40 species of felines, having once roamed throughout all of sub-Saharan Africa, the mountainous Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and most of East and South-East Asia too.

I love seeing the enormous diversity of habitats that different photographers from all over the Africa and Asia have captured leopards with their lenses, from the plains of Africa, to the sands of Persia and the jungles of India. 

In most of their range, leopards often share their ecosystems with larger, stronger, more powerful cats, like lions or tigers. Leopards gracefully combine stealth, strength, cunning and prowess to survive alongside their cousins, often being more adaptable to urban environments and resilient to change. Leopards teach us a beautiful lesson: they’re not the biggest or the loudest, but they thrive nonetheless, winning the admiration and respect of millions of people the world over.” 

www.celinachien.com
www.instagram.com/celinaxchien

My Big 5

Leopard
Jaguarundi
Kodkod
Tiger
Gibbon