Lion Cubs

On Monday I went to Werribee Open Range Zoo with my sister. When I’ve been taking a lot of photos of people – doing portraits or con photos – I always need to decompress by doing something completely different.

When I heard that there were four newborn cubs at Werribee I knew I wanted to go and see them before they got too big! We were really lucky, because that day was the first time people were allowed up close to the glass (they had to be introduced to crowds very gradually). They didn’t seem bothered at all, and made a great show of sharing their first bone, rolling around on the grass practicing pouncing and stalking, and bothering their parents.

One of the best parts was watching them all sit up when they heard their dad growling, and then start to run around trying to growl like him.

They are such beautiful, graceful animals and it was so rewarding just sitting quietly and watching them. The lion cubs were obviously the big drawcard, but I found the lioness just as captivating to watch. She seemed very patient with her new babies, constantly making sure they were all getting a chance to eat the bone and giving them baths. She didn’t seem overly bothered by us all watching, every so often casting us a glance but then going back to her newborns. The photo that I took of her was probably my favourite of the day.

This did nothing whatsoever to quell my wish to one day do a proper safari. I can’t even begin to imagine how amazing that would be.

Werribee Open Range Zoo // August 2016

My sister and I took ourselves to Werribee on a beautiful Winter’s day to try the “off-road safari” at Werribee Open Range Zoo here in Victoria. I’d been to Werribee before, but I’d never gone on the safari.

 

 

We had a really great safari tour guide, Matthew, who told us about the shift in zoos and wildlife parks away from the traditional attraction sites of the past to a focus on conservation and education, and the animals we saw definitely seemed to benefit from it.

 

 

 

 

They are given strictly limited human contact (only what conditioning is needed to help keep them manageable and safe) and the environment and species social groups help them to maintain their natural behaviours. It was actually really moving to see how happy and settled they seemed, even when we were driving around near them.

 

 

 

 

The only part I was disappointed about was that after the tour, we went to see the Lion enclosure but it was largely blocked off. The big cats are my favourite to photograph, so it was hard to take photos that worked from such a distance. I managed to get a couple of photos, but I wasn’t as happy with them.

 

 

 

I’m not really sure what prompted me to try editing them in black and white, I think I just tried it with one of the giraffe photographs and liked how striking the effect was. I did edit a couple of photos in a sort of low contrast, semi-matte colour, boosting the levels of the blues and greens using saturation levels in Lightroom, then selective colour in Photoshop. I made sure whatever I was doing with the colour in Photoshop to keep watching that the whites stayed white, which is always a good guide to keep things looking realistic (unless unrealistic is what you’re going for).

 

 

 

Taking photos of wildlife is, obviously, a completely different skill set to taking convention photos or portraits, and so it’s nice to stretch yourself and do something different!

Melbourne Zoo, January 2016

I should start by saying it’s obvious I haven’t kept up with my 366 Project, and I’m really sorry for that. But while I may not post something every day, I’m still going to try to post 366 things that I find inspirational. Usually it will probably be portraits or quotes, and I’ll still try to say why I find them so inspirational, or the elements in them that caught my attention.

My friend Karen and I decided that we wanted to have a sort of creative expedition this month, so we decided to go to the zoo. We tried to pick a day that wouldn’t be too hot, but Melbourne being Melbourne it ended up being a scorching hot day. Not the best conditions for the animals, us, or photos but we made do.

I have a definite love/hate relationship with shooting at the zoo. On the one hand I absolutely adore animals, and I can sit for ages – especially in the Sumatran Tiger exhibit – and just watch them. I understand that zoos are also important for conservation and research, and that often can be the difference between a species dying out or retaining numbers. On the other hand, sometimes it’s hard not to project and put feelings onto the animals and start to question the wisdom of locking them up for paying people’s amusement. One photo in particular that I captured of an elephant seems to evoke that never-ending tension.

 

 

He was actually eating at the time quite happily, and he looked relaxed and his eyes don’t betray any kind of fear or trepidation (as far as I can tell) but the bars across the frame still remind us that he is captured, he is in an unnatural habitat and we are the reason he’s there. Different people will come at the photo in different ways and with different opinions depending on your overall attitude towards zoos and conservation, but that’s what makes photography so interesting.

It also sort of highlighted for me the effect of framing and cropping and how important it becomes in the overall statement being made in a photo, which I am thinking of writing another blog post about since I’ve been working on re-cropping some of my old photos.

Because it was so hot, it became a game of patience waiting for the animals to be comfortable enough to come out. It also made it hard to find the right exposure settings, because there was a tendency for there to be too much glare and stark contrast between the highlights and shadows, so we were constantly having to adjust our settings even moving from one side of an exhibit to another (if you’ve ever heard people say it’s better to have a wedding day that’s not too sunny, they mean for the photography and it’s totally true). It was frustrating but good practice. A lot of the time I was trying to slightly underexpose, in order to have something I could work with later. It’s much easier to bring out shadows rather than try to recover highlights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my favourite photographs from the day was actually a mistake. The Sumatran Tiger was pacing back and forth between the dark overhanging leaves and the dappled spots over by the water. I had obviously adjusted my shutter to capture the latter, and then forgot as he started pacing back over towards the darkness, so the aperture/shutter speed/ISO were all set to capture a bright rather than dark setting, so the picture came out way too dark. But for some reason, the fact that all you could see was this beam of light on his face really struck me, and when I was editing it I actually exaggerated the shadows even more to emphasize this contrast.

 

 

It’s in no way perfect – I wish there was more of his eyes brought out and the light on his face was a tiny bit less stark – but it was the first picture that when I was looking through them I went, okay, I like that. So sometimes mistakes aren’t all bad, and it goes to show not to be too hasty when you’re going through your photos even if you have messed up on the technical side, because something can still come out of it. Even if it’s just the knowledge that you did make a mistake and you know to learn from it next time.

Despite the inherent tensions I have, every time I go to the zoo I come away thinking how much I want to go on a safari. It’s definitely on my bucket list.

 

 

Melbourne Zoo // January 2015

It has been blistering hot in Melbourne the last week or so, and so it wasn’t the best day to go to the zoo yesterday but my friend Nicole and I persisted. I’ve been waiting to go to the zoo for a long while – it’s a completely different skill set taking photos at the zoo to taking photos at a convention. I guess they both involve waiting for the right moment (which is fundamental in all photography) but there’s a level of patience required with taking photos at the zoo that you don’t have at cons.

I also find that the audience actually plays a huge part in how I photograph conventions, and I’m feeding off the push-pull between the crowd and the people on stage. Whereas a lot of times at the zoo I’m trying to filter out the other people around me – and usually trying to fight for space in amongst everyone!

And, in fairness, I haven’t heard on of an actor refusing to go out on stage because the weather is too hot, and this happened quite a bit at the zoo yesterday (It could happen though, never say never).

So I didn’t get a huge quantity of photos, but I was happy with the ones I did manage to get.

Lion resting at the new Lion Gorge, Melbourne Zoo

 

The heat was getting to everyone :( Western Lowland Gorilla, Melbourne Zoo

 

My favourite – Sumatran Tiger, Melbourne Zoo

 

Black Capped Capuchin monkey, Melbourne Zoo

 

And, funnily enough, I ran into a Canon photography club a few times as we were walking around and they were all carrying these massive L-series super telephoto lenses, something like this, and I felt very jealous and very inadequate!

“Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo” Paul Simon

As promised, I have edited some more pictures from my trip to the zoo.

A playful Orangutan

Among the treetops

Basking in the sun

I’m rapidly deciding that the Sumatran Tigers are my favourite. I love the environment they have them in at the Melbourne Zoo, it’s beautiful. And the two male cubs who were there on the day I took photos were gorgeous.

A cool drink

I’m really trying to be conscious of not “over-processing” my photos too much, but the temptation is definitely there. I’m also trying not to compare myself with other photographers, but that is going to take a long time to grow out of.