My local zoo had their annual Neighbours’ Barbeque last night, so along with other humans from my zoo-including neighbourhood I enjoyed the zoo for a couple of hours after normal closing time. And had a free sausage. I also took my IR-modified camera, and a 55-200mm lens with a 590nm filter. These are the ‘natural colours’ processed in ARC, with the red channel pulled back.
As scenic as any scenery you’ll ever see: the ruins of Dunnottar Castle near Aberdeen, Scotland. If I was a different kind of photographing tourist, the kind who researches carefully, and arises several hours before dawn to get to places by sunrise, I’d have really amazing photos of this place. I confess that this trip had much more of a “oh, lets sleep in, then stop for a delicious brunch” travel style, interspersed with “hey, look, there’s a thing let’s visit it” moments. But heck, this castle is an amazing place to wander around and imagine the everyday lives of long-ago people who lived here, and the waves of invading armies that they fought off – until they didn’t.
With the IR modified camera.
With the IR modified camera, f/6.3, 1/200, 55mm
I found it pretty easy to pack my suitcase for my big trip this year: five pairs of identical black yoga pants, six interchangeable t-shirts, something for cold days, something for the occasional flash restaurant, walking shoes and casual shoes, toothbrush and sunscreen and done. But choosing which camera and which camera lenses to take is difficult. Trading off considerations such as “what if I see X, and I don’t have xyz”, against the weight of good lenses and a laptop. And security: travel insurance doesn’t cover you if electronics is stolen from your car, and expensive, visibly expensive gear is going to make you a target for thievery in general. Also, my husband was taking a camera and was going to be standing beside me so . . . I didn’t want to be taking too-similar photos.
So, this time: not my best camera, not my best lenses, which are either expensive or heavy. No laptop. Instead, I took my IR camera (which is a modified A6000), with just basic lenses, a pancake 16mm for landscapes, and 55-200mm zoom for the rest. My husband’s camera is an unmodified A6000, so we could share spare batteries and the charger. I also took a small but very good compact (an RX100iv) for ‘normal’ photographs and collecting images in museums (ie, stock to use in future projects), and for days when the weather was clearly not going to work for IR. I used an android tablet for some basic processing of images to share on Facebook during the trip, using the jpgs that Sony creates when you use their app to transfer photos for uploading and Snapseed to tweak ’em. I took an usb harddrive and a Filehub so we could back up our SD cards. One exceedingly useful gadget was a $30 5 port travel USB charger that came with adapters for the UK and Europe and Australia, and high powered slots for phones and tablets, so that we could charge our ridiculous number of electronic devices (fitbits and camera batteries and phones and all). And, as just a small backpack’s worth of gear this setup worked together pretty well.
Except of course, now I’m home. And I have . . . a lot of files to process. So many castles. And amazing landscapes. And wild stormscapes rushing up dramatic cliffs. And all the rest. Expect this blog to groan under the weight of some ancient European monuments in the next week or two.
I have friends who hate zoos. Who think all the creatures should be freed from these vile prisons, and passionately believe keeping anything behind bars is immoral.
I don’t agree.
I pay a subscription membership, and walk around Wellington Zoo at least once most weeks. I usually take a camera. While I’m too timid to ask permission from strangers in the street to take their photographs, the animals at the zoo are always happy to pose, or alternatively quite busy living their animal lives and indifferent to my presence.
I’ve been visiting ‘my’ zoo for over 50 years now, albeit with occasional decade long gaps. When I was a child chimp tea parties were still a thing, there was an elephant you could have rides on, and lions and tigers and a polar bear paced endlessly in tiny cages. Zoos are different now. Public zoos are devoted to the welfare and optimal care of their creatures. They use the entertainment value of the animals, including star attraction animals, to fund education and conservation, including of less glamorous creatures that are still worthy of study and respect. The enclosures are larger and leafier, and animal psychology has been used to create enrichment programmes.
Is this okay?
I am a little uneasy about the “encounter” sessions, the opportunity to pay a hefty extra charge over zoo admission and go in an enclosure. Wild creatures are not pets, and it feels wrong to see them being petted. But, the encounter animals are chosen carefully for placid and predictable temperament. They’re conditioned to tolerate handling from an early age so that they’ll let themselves be caught and handled for veterinary procedures. The high-fee paying humans are carefully controlled and managed by the zoo staff, and those funds help keep the zoo afloat financially. That cheetah certainly could bite the gently patting hands, if it wanted to. She just doesn’t want to. For now.
Modern zoos acquire new inhabitants from responsible sources. Most are acquired via breeding exchange with other zoos. There are also some wild-born animals that are injured and not able to be fully rehabilitated to live in the wild again, and others that have been rescued from illegal pet situations, and lack the hunting or social skills that would let them ever live as wild animals – Wellington’s Sun Bears have that history. For some, zoos are a genetic backup for an endangered species at risk in the wild due to disease, for example the Tasmanian Devil and those face tumors.
There are good reasons that Wellington zoo doesn’t have a lot of very large animals, especially large animals that like to live in groups: there isn’t the room. There are no wide vistas to roam, and it’s too cold and too hilly for creatures that like a bit of in-lake wallowing. Although I miss the elephant of my childhood, I quite understand that there isn’t room to look after one well, let alone space and money for a socially appropriate herd. Small social carnivores seem to do very nicely in captivity, and otters and meerkats are always enchanting to watch. Although they do somewhat lack the majesty of Kamala, the elephant I met when I was three, and who I still remember decades later.
Not demonic
Baboons are animals I find genuinely horrifying, and would never ever want to encounter on the wrong side of a stout enclosure fence. When I took my young grandson on his first trip to the zoo recently, we stopped by their enclosure. Part of the troupe started banging on the glass, teeth bared, shrieking at him. Baboons and their brightly coloured parts trigger many complicated conversations between parents and children, often starting with “Mummy, what is the big baboon doing to the little baboon?”
Animals in zoos act as representatives for their species, give children reason to care about science and the environment, and spark awareness of the larger world. They may be inspired to find out if their loo-paper comes from a sustainable source, or start to understand why throwing plastic rubbish in the sea is a bad thing. Watching a chimp family play together, looking at a bear or a lion and having it look back (hungrily!), seeing a penguin in the zoo hospital or an otter using its clever paws to hold a fish, these are starting places for stories and conversations. What emotions do we share with animals? Well, pretty much all of them, and so what does it mean to be human?
A selection of common small farm animals has been recently added to the zoo; sheep, pigs and chickens are as exotic to the average city-bred toddler as meerkats or red pandas. I’m mildly mesmerised by a new bee exhibit, and the deep sound the hive makes, audible only when you hold your ear near the glass. After visiting a zoo, it’s impossible not to look at domestic animals and see the similarities and differences to wild relatives. Cats and tigers, dogs and dingos. Monkeys, chimps and people.
Victorians used to visit madhouses and prisons for personal entertainment, and maybe one day zoo trips will be regarded the same way. But for now, it’s good to be able to go to a modern zoo, and when you look at an exotic animal get that a thinking feeling being is looking back at you. Except for the baboons, whom I suspect to be mainly thinking “garrrgh, kill everything that’s not a baboon”.
Zoo visit with son and Grandson
(Photos all taken with IR modified camera)
No snow or ice today, just bright sunshine and a very chilly wind. There was an organised ‘cosplay photoshoot’ on top of a nearby hill today as part of Comicon, so I took the IR camera. Only the one model (vs fifteen or so photographers), and good on her for being prepared to stand in the cold at 9am. I suspect she may have wished her costume cloak had been fully functional, rather than mostly nylon, with just a strip of faux fur on the edge . . .
Interesting with these two different filters (nm 680 on the top, 590 on the bottom) picked out entirely different levels of detail in the fabric.
Ah, the joy of budget photography purchases from online auction sites – sometimes dud, but much more often a way to explore a new approach without laying out too many dollars. Today the snail infested letterbox held (a luckily not too snail-gnawed) parcel containing a small 720nm infrared filter. Now I can use my Lensbaby bendy lens with my IR camera.
Only the dog was available to model just now, but this weekend I’ll try some more ambitious content. I cheerfully anticipate the process will be equal parts enjoyable and frustrating, as focus can be hard to achieve, and the strange distortions can be lovely or loathsome. At least the filter fits!
