Canada lynx I Lynx canadensis

I had a few hours to spare. I didn’t need to be on the east coast until late afternoon, visiting friends for a New Year get-together. Hamerton wasn’t too far off my proposed route to the coast, so I grabbed my camera bag and set off for Huntingdonshire.

Hamerton Zoological Park is quite a recent discovery for me, but it has quickly become one of my favourite places to visit. Although quite small, it has a range of unusual animals, and I’m lucky in that it’s only about an hour or so’s drive from my home.

One of the more recent additions to the collection are the pair of Canada lynx.  These were, I understand, brought over from a private collection in the USA around a year ago. The female ‘Tanzi’ has been kept offshow since her arrival, but the male ‘Timmy’ can be viewed in a prominent position very near to the entrance to the Park (in the Binturong House). This is a temporary situation: work is almost complete on a spacious new enclosure which will house both animals in due course. Hamerton is, I believe, the only UK collection currently holding this species, and one of only half-a-dozen or so in the whole of Europe.

I arrived just after opening time on a gloriously sunny New Years Eve morning. I couldn’t see Timmy in his outside enclosure, so popped my head inside the Binturong House and saw him sitting on a fake rock in the window, basking in the low winter sunshine streaming through the glazed doors. I took a quick wide shot of the entire scene from the doorway, and then carefully retreated in the hope of not disturbing him. After adjusting my camera settings, I then re-entered the house very slowly and was pleased to see that he obviously wasn’t planning on moving out of his suntrap any time soon. I was then able to take several closeup shots of him as he continued to enjoy the sun.

Out of the eight shots I took, this was probably my favourite. Although I somehow missed getting both ear tufts in shot, I still like it for the slightly quizzical expression on his tilted face, and the hint of a warm defocussed background in the lower third of the shot (the interior of the house is lined with what appears to be wood-effect panelling).

I’d chosen an aperture of f/5.6 for this particular shot, on my 70-200mm zoom set at a typical portrait focal length of around 90mm. The lynx head is roughly the same overall size as a human head, so these portrait settings can apply equally well to both types of ‘sitter’. I could’ve lowered the ISO below my chosen setting of 400, but on the Canon EOS 5D Mark III there is little noticeable difference between the lower ISOs, at least for ‘normal’ size enlargements. ISO 400 allowed me to retain a highish shutter speed of 1/500s, which meant I could handhold the camera quite easily without camera shake becoming a major factor, even if I decided to zoom in to 200mm for a detail shot.

image edit

Here is the original shot:

Canada lynx I (prior to edit)

Post-processing on this one was quite straightforward — lifting the shadows/midtones whilst deepening the darker tones. Also bringing back some detail in the whites by use of the Highlights slider in Lightroom. Adding a little Vibrance and that was it. The crop was exactly as seen in camera, with the head positioned slightly off-centre, tilting into the space on the left of shot.