Each mating session takes about thirty seconds or so -- the male gently bites the female’s neck at the climactic moment. The pair spent at least four days mating, coupling every twenty minutes at the beginning and then increasing the intervals as exhaustion set in. The male expresses the emotion while the lioness remains passive. Both will sleep until the next encounter. I originally shot this image as a horizontal, and then cropped it into a narrow vertical. It was the only time I was able to get a shot of mating lions from the front, and this vertical format strengthens the image by contrasting the energetic response of the male to the passive reaction of the lioness as viewed from a confrontational frontal vantage point.