ZSL Whipsnade Zoo (post category)

Kobus ellipsiprymnus

Common waterbuck I Kobus ellipsiprymnus ellipsiprymnus

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A small herd of common (or ellipsen) waterbuck — all females — currently share a large paddock with Grevy’s zebra at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.

This shot was taken on a cold day in early March. The other herd members had chosen to stay in or near to their housing block, but this individual was walking around in the main paddock, quite close to the fence. Often the waterbuck will take off towards the centre of the paddock when someone approaches, but this female chose to stand still whilst I slowly drew nearer. She watched me intently as I crouched down, partly behind a bush, into a position which enabled me to juxtapose her head and the upper half of her body against the sky.

She was close enough that a moderate telephoto setting of 121mm on my 70-200mm zoom sufficed; this allowed the inclusion of some foreground and sky to frame the animal. Unless I’m going for a particular effect, I try to include more space around the subject, when shooting, than seems natural. I often used to zoom in as far as I could, making the maximum use of the range of any zoom lens, but would often find later that I’d not left enough room to allow for things such as straightening wonky horizons, giving the subject ‘looking into’ or ‘walking into’ space, and so on. The subject would look far too ‘confined’ or claustrophobic within a tight frame — nowadays I much prefer to give them space to breathe.

There is still some overexposure in the sky. I guess I could’ve shot a bracketed sequence of shots at various exposures and then combined them together on the computer — this would probably have worked ok, as the subject was fairly stationary. However, I didn’t know how long she would stand in that position at the time, and I didn’t have time to seek out the autobracketing function on my camera, so just went with the single shot approach. Actually this was the best of around half-a-dozen similar shots; making sure that I’d captured the right expression, with both ears forward, and ensuring that all four of her legs were visible. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve captured what I thought was a great shot, only to later discover that I’ve instead photographed what appears to be a three-legged animal, or one which has one ear forward and the other back (which just looks odd).

image edit

As you can see from the original, I didn’t increase the exposure to correctly expose the main subject, as I wanted to retain detail in the sky:

Common waterbuck I (prior to edit)

Being also a landscape photographer, I’m really not a fan of cloudless skies; this has carried over into my zoo photography, which I find often combines elements of landscape photography with pure ‘animal’ photography. In this case, I liked the cloudy sky (luckily, here in the UK, we get a lot of skies like this!) and wanted to make a feature of it.

Even so, I still overexposed the sky a little, as there are some burnt-out patches in the brightest areas, but I’m ok with that. I did bring the other highlights down in Lightroom though (-85 on the scale).

Other Lightroom edits included a large increase in Shadows (+73, to counter the underexposure) and Whites (+49), and a negative setting to deepen the Blacks (-35). A small increase on the Vibrance slider of +7, and finally a slight vignette (-11, feathered).

I left the crop exactly as taken; there is a slight distraction in that the zebra housing can be seen in the left background, but I’ve decided to leave it visible for now.

Technical

f/6.3

aperture


1/1600s

shutter


400

iso


121mm

focal length


Kobus ellipsiprymnus

Grevy’s zebra I Equus grevyi

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This is another shot from a few years ago, taken on a very cold and foggy February afternoon. With snow having fallen a day or two earlier, and freezing temperatures since, there was still plenty of snow on the ground up at Whipsnade, although thankfully the steep approach roads were clear.

There is a grassy ridge in the large zebra paddock at Whipsnade, just opposite the giraffe enclosure. On this occasion, its exposed nature meant that there were still a few blades of grass showing, unlike the rest of the paddock which was blanketed white.

The Grevy’s zebra were out in the paddock. This mare climbed up and walked along the ridgetop, nibbling at the sparse blades of grass. I took a few long shots of her grazing, but then she moved forward, stopped, and momentarily stretched her hind leg rearward. That was enough to make the shot ‘interesting’ (to me, at least!).

This was taken with a 70-200mm zoom lens, on a Canon 5D Mark II camera. I’d also fitted a 1.4x converter. The 70-200 is my ‘walkaround’ lens at most zoos (although usually without the converter, as it has a tendency to degrade the image slightly). I keep the aperture set around f/5.6-f/8, which generally gives me enough separation between subject and background at the typical shooting distances found in these situations, but still gives a reasonable depth of field on the subject. I’d set the ISO high enough to give a hand-holdable shutter speed, even at the longer end of the zoom range.

image edit

Back in the digital darkroom, I realised how badly I’d framed and exposed the shot:

Grevy’s zebra I (prior to edit)

Of course, I’d forgotten that snow (and a white sky) means that an exposure compensation of around +1 or +2 stops is usually necessary to render the snow as white in-camera, rather than the murky grey seen here!

I could’ve just binned the image there and then. However, I look closer and cropped the image down to around half of the original, straightening it in the process. Had it not been a relatively spur-of-the-moment shot, I would’ve had time to zoom in further at the time of shooting: as it was, I had less than a second to get the shot.

After cloning out a couple of distracting twigs from the foreground, I did a quick monochrome conversion, upping the exposure and foreground contrast in the process. The background trees became much less noticeable when I’d finished.

Now it looked much better. Ideally I’d have liked her to have walked a little closer to the crest of the ridge, so that all her hooves were visible. But overall I’m quite happy with the shot. I like the graphic, high key feel, and the fog (and edit) has made the background trees less of a distraction than they might otherwise have been. Finally, that outstretched leg provided the extra bit of interest…

Technical

f/7.1

aperture


1/320s

shutter


400

iso


225mm

focal length


Wisent II Bison bonasus

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This shot was taken back in 2012, on a bitterly cold and foggy February morning. I’d arranged, a few days earlier, to meet up with a photographer friend at Whipsnade on this particular weekend; and, although we’d thought about postponing the trip, we went ahead in the end. I’m really glad we did. We don’t often get a lot of snow in this part of the country, so it was quite a novelty (possibly for the animals too), and produced interesting sets of photos for both of us.

I’ve no idea why, but I almost always turn right upon entering a zoo. Thus we ended up going round the park in an anticlockwise direction. With this being Whipsnade, it meant that some of the first animals we came across were the small herd of European bison, also known as wisent.

Normally the bison stay well out towards the centre of their paddock. However, with a layer of snow carpeting it, and with us being two of very few visitors braving the weather that day, they were more interested in us than usual; presumably hoping that we’d brought food along (sadly, we had no bison fodder with us).

These two wandered over to the iron fencing where we stood, and we were able to spend several minutes photographing them from close range. It’s not often that I get to use a wideangle lens for animal shots, although I nearly always carry a 17-40mm zoom with me. Such a lens is always handy for record shots which show a whole enclosure, not to mention the occasional landscape shot — particularly so at Whipsnade with its stunning location.

We both took many shots of these two, at distances ranging from around 10m down to (with care!) just a few cm, before switching to our usual telephotos to capture some of the other individuals which had stayed further out in the enclosure.

I’ve chosen this shot, as I liked the position of the two bison, and particularly the head of the right-hand individual and its sideways glance. The short focal length has emphasized the heads of both animals, and I feel that this, combined with a fairly low shooting position, has increased their ‘majesty’ (for want of a better word). The thick fog has effectively removed any distracting background elements — fences, hedges, trees — which would normally be visible in shots at this location.

image edit

As for post-processing: the shot is about an 80% crop of the whole frame:

Wisent II (prior to edit)

The crop also straightened the shot, although I still had to clone out a small portion of iron railing which intruded into the bottom right corner of the cropped image.

I’ve lifted the shadows quite a bit, and brightened the whites (possibly too much); added a little Clarity and upped the Vibrance in Lightroom.

As you can see, as well as a couple of small branches and hoofprints, and a bit of vegetation attached to a horn, I’ve also cloned out another bison from the central background, caught in quite an, er.. “interesting” pose! I may yet do another version with that animal included.

Technical

f/7.1

aperture


1/160s

shutter


400

iso


17mm

focal length


Alt text for Amur tiger I

Amur tiger I Panthera tigris altaica

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I’d never really had much luck photographing the tigers at Whipsnade. I have a whole heap of very average pictures of them, taken over the past five years or so. I think it’s partly to do with that fact that I’d usually visited at fairly busy times, and ‘sharing’ the experience with several tens or even hundreds of other people means that it’s difficult to catch that moment where you have direct eye contact. This time, however, was different…

I’d been at the Zoo for several hours, on a cold, foggy day last November. It was mid-afternoon, normally a busy time on any reasonably nice day, but on this occasion the poor weather meant that I was almost the only person at Tiger Falls, the fantastic Whipsnade exhibit housing a pair of Amur, or Siberian, tigers.

Anastasia, the female, was resting on the uppermost platform at the lower end of the exhibit, from where she was keeping a close eye on the much younger male, Botzman, as he patrolled the enclosure below.

I headed for the two large, glass viewing windows on the lower path which skirts the south side of the exhibit, right next to the pond at the foot of the aforementioned ‘falls’. I’d had the occasional ‘ok’ shot from here on previous visits, as one or other of the tigers made their way downhill from their housing/den area, providing a brief face-on view. Although, to be honest, I needed a longer lens for that particular shot: my 70-200mm handles most subjects pretty well in a typical zoo situation, but there are definitely occasions when the extra reach of something like a 400mm would be very welcome.

However, I persevered and tracked Botzman around the enclosure, waiting for an opportune moment. Nothing much was happening though: the couple on the far side of the enclosure had wandered off, so now it was just Botzman and me, with Ana having settled down for a snooze on her lofty lookout post. As the big male headed across to the far side of the exhibit, I thought it would be a good opportunity to grab a makeshift lenshood from my camera backpack, which I’d earlier placed on the ground by my feet. The lenshood, made from a rectangle of thin black foam sheeting picked up from a craft shop, and held onto the lens with a piece of garden wire, serves to minimise the effect of reflections when shooting through glass. It’s a lot more flexible than the standard hood supplied with the lens, and can be moulded to a suitable shape to combat reflections at almost any angle.

So, I’m crouched down next to my camera bag, fishing around for said piece of foam and length of garden wire; whilst all the time keeping half an eye on the enclosure. I reckoned I’d got plenty of time before Botzman came closer again. However, I hadn’t anticipated what happened next: Botzman looked up from his casual explorations and suddenly caught sight of me.

I was still crouched down, most of my body obscured beneath the lower edge of the window, and with a hat on as it was pretty cold. So I’m guessing that, from his perspective, I probably looked potentially snack-sized and worthy of immediate investigation. Maybe I look like a chicken? Who knows. Anyway, suddenly I became the most interesting thing in his world, and he started heading directly across the enclosure towards me: not quite running, but at a brisk, purposeful walking pace, eyes fixed in my direction.

Eye contact with the big cats always manages to take my breath away. I’d only experienced it for fleeting moments with the Whipsnade tigers previously; this time, however, I had Botzman’s full and undivided attention for what seemed like ages.

It took me a second or so to fully register what was happening, and then some sort of photographic instinct kicked in; I dropped the lenshood, and quickly raised the camera into position. I was still crouched down at this point, but this was perfect as the camera was then at tiger eye-level as he got nearer. Also, had I stood up, I guess my (unintentional) ruse would’ve been discovered, and he’d have lost interest immediately.

It had been foggy all morning, and thickly overcast all afternoon. So the light levels generally were pretty low, and things locally were even worse, as I was effectively crouched down in a north-facing hollow in a lightly wooded area of the Zoo. But even so, the Canon 5D Mark III autofocus snapped onto Botzman’s face almost instantly, and tracked focus as he carried on approaching. I fired off just four shots as he headed directly towards me. For some reason, I still haven’t got into the habit of holding my finger down on the shutter button and letting the camera ‘machine-gun’ 20 or so shots by itself  — I guess it’s something to do with my previous cameras having a fairly pedestrian continuous frame rate, which in turn meant a high likelihood of missing that ‘decisive moment’. The 5D3 is much better in this regard, and it’s something I need to experiment with.

With the light being so poor, I’d set a high ISO of 3200 as I’d approached the exhibit earlier, together with a wide aperture of f/5 which I figured would keep shutter speeds fast enough for successful handheld shots at 200mm. ISO 3200 is as high as I would generally go on the 5D3, although I have had usable shots all the way up to the 25,600 setting on occasion.

image edit

Back on the computer, I chose this particular shot of the four — I liked the position of the leading foreleg, the fact that the tail can be seen, and of course the amazing eye-contact.

Amur tiger I (prior to edit)

I’m still undecided though, on the best way to process the photo. I’ve tried several options including portrait, landscape and square crops, leaving the background trees and bushes more visible, or darkening them. For this version, I’ve gone for a more heavily-processed look, which starts with a 50% cropped landscape format, with the subject positioned quite far to the left of centre, ‘walking into’ the space on the right. I’ve applied a heavy dose of contrast and quite a bit of Vibrance in Lightroom, and then taken the cropped and part-edited shot into Viveza, one of the Google Nik Collection plugins, which allowed me to selectively adjust the brightness, hue, saturation of the background versus the main subject. I chose to darken the background right down, which simultaneously created the effect of a pool of light just behind the tiger.

Cloning of distractions was minimal: just a couple of bits of brightly-lit twiggery in the bushes behind the tiger, and similarly a blade of grass or two from the foreground.

I realise that parts of the tiger are now seriously overexposed, and I may yet have another go at it, but, for the moment, I’m reasonably happy with this version.

Technical

f/5

aperture


1/500s

shutter


3200

iso


191mm

focal length


Alt text for Amur tiger I

Cheetah I Acinonyx jubatus

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I really like visiting zoos in bad weather. Well, maybe not bad weather exactly — I hate trying to take photos on a windy, rainy day — but at least weather which provides the opportunity to photograph the animals in situations different from the norm. Snow is always good for this, being unusual enough in most parts of the UK to provide interest. And fog — as here — is another.

An added bonus is that the ‘interesting’ weather generally puts off a lot of people from visiting zoos. Not that I hate people, you understand, but it does allow a little more flexibility, enabling me to move the camera quickly to the optimum position between shots without obstructing fellow visitors.

On this particular late November day in 2014, the fog had been quite thick when I arrived, and I’d already stopped by the rhino and sitatunga paddocks and captured some ethereal, almost abstract shots of their shapes on the horizon. It was a little less misty when I arrived at the cheetah enclosure, and a couple of animals were out near the viewing area next to the main perimeter road. One was lying on the grass, and with careful positioning I was able to get what I thought were some nice shots from low down, with direct eye contact. However, looking at them later on the computer, I realised that the camera angle had foreshortened the cheetah’s front legs to the point where they looked somewhat odd.

The second individual was wandering around, and suddenly hopped up onto a tree bough which had been inserted into the ground in the enclosure.

From this position, there’s no option but to shoot through a wire fence, and, with the fence in question being around 2m away, I set the aperture to the maximum available — f/4 — on my 70-200mm zoom, in the hope that any wire strands would be thrown so far out of focus so as to be invisible (or, at least, non-distracting). ISO 640 gave a high shutter speed to deal with any subject or camera movement. I was leaning over one low fence to get the camera as close as possible to the main fence, although it was still a good few feet away.

I held the camera as low as possible (I use a right-angle viewfinder attachment for this, as my camera — a Canon 5D Mark II in this instance — doesn’t have a flip-out rear screen facility). This meant that I could position the whole of the cheetah against the grey sky and out-of-focus hedge in the background, and not have it half-and-half aginst the grass and the hedge

I shot a couple of frames while it scanned around, and then another two as it looked towards the ground and the jumped down to rejoin its companion.

image edit

Two of the four shots looked ok: one where the cheetah was looking downwards, and this one where it is looking out of the enclosure towards the zebra paddock. This is probably my favourite, as it shows the eyes quite well.

Cheetah I (prior to edit)

The tree/branch was proving quite troublesome to deal with effectively, but in the end I settled on an agreeable composition. I wanted the cheetah to be looking into the frame — this meant dealing with the upright boughs on the left. I’ve settled on a crop where the uppermost branch of the ‘V’ in the bough intersects the corner of the frame. I also moved the crop inwards on both sides, so that none of the branch ends were visible, and excluded the lower branch, and the small tree jutting into the top right of frame, completely.  All of that meant that I ended up with a roughly 50% crop, but to me, it just looks more ‘correct’ than any of the other options I tried. The heavier branches on the left, I feel, balance the cheetah and branch on the right. My Photoshop skills are not up to removing the central branch though!

I’ve increased the saturation and contrast of the various elements, the foreground more so than the background, in order to increase subject separation from the defocussed grass and hedge. I’ve also increased the shadow detail of the foreground branches, as I quite like the lichen and bark details. The tree in the right midground is still a little distracting, but I think it’s just about far enough out of focus and fog-enshrouded to not cause too many issues.

Technical

f/4

aperture


1/2000s

shutter


640

iso


160mm

focal length


Wisent I Bison bonasus

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A shot taken during a winter visit to ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in southern England. There had been some snowfall a day or two prior to my visit. The elevated position of the park meant that the snow was still plentiful on the ground when I arrived, and there was a very dense fog.

Consequently, it was quite easy to get a clean background — at other times of the year I’m often looking around for alternative viewpoints, trying to minimise the impact of an ugly tree / fence / hedge / building which is intruding into the background of a shot. With snow and fog combined, there was much more freedom to compose the subject, with a plain or near-plain background available at almost all shooting angles.

With this shot of one of the small herd of European bison (wisent), I was able to shoot from a near standing position; keeping the subject to the right, a wide lens meant that, even though I was close to the subject, I could also include a portion of the snow-covered paddock.

I chose to exclude the main identifying features (the horns) on this particular shot, concentrating on the eye and beard.

image edit

I’d framed the shot in-camera in portrait format:

Wisent I (prior to edit)

Initial edits included correcting the underexposure and boosting the shadow detail, as well as adding Vibrance and some Clarity in Lightroom to lift the subject out of the thick fog. The whites were brightened in order to bleach out the background completely, giving an almost “studio” feel to the shot.

Feeling that the original shot was somewhat ‘cramped’, I then opened it in Photoshop, checked that the whites were indeed pure white, and then added a chunk of additional plain white background to the left of the subject, making it look as if the bison was peering in from the edge of the frame.

Technical

f/7.1

aperture


1/160s

shutter


400

iso


17mm

focal length