A visit in the local zoo ....

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Inspired by one of the LuLa Video Journals I spent 6 hours in the local zoo yesterday to take animal portraits.
This first one is one of my favorites, but I will post more to this thread along as I process them.
Some will be in color, some will be b/w.
And yes - I really enjoyed my new digital system and especially the telezoom ... (Fuji X-E2 + 55-200mm)

The complete series can be seen on my Flickr stream as a set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/feldhaim/sets/72157641746785553

Cheers
~Chris

Orang Utan

Tiger

Baby Elephant

Baboon Mother and Baby

Male Baboon Closeup

[luxborealis]

Great photographs. Great portraits.

No fault of your's, Chris, as they are excellent photographs, but am I seeing forlorn looks in the animals' eyes? Or am I just projecting that feeling on them because I know they are in captivity. I wonder if I would see them the same way if I had not known they were in a zoo. I should look back at the portraits I've done of animals in the wild to see if the same look is there.

[RSL]

Great job, Chris. When I go to the zoo I always find the people a lot more interesting than the animals. Maybe that's because I worked at the Detroit zoo several summers when I was a kid.

[sdwilsonsct]

Great photographs. Great portraits.

+1.

[pikeys]

Outstanding shots....all of them.
I like #1 the best
Question-why did you choose to make some of them B&W?

Mike

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Outstanding shots....all of them.
I like #1 the best
Question-why did you choose to make some of them B&W?

Mike

Sometimes the color is questionable, especially because of distractions added from the zoo environment.
After all everything in the zoo is sort of posed / staged / presented, sometimes with questionable results.
The B/W abstraction allows me to present the animal the way I perceived it without the zoo props getting in the way.
Also B/W allows a more aggressive sharpening (fur!) which sometimes is desirable.
Cheers
~Chris

[luxborealis]

+1 for B&W - it is very effective. The colour is superfluous in many respects, as it is in many of the great human portraits. We can concentrate on the details and not be distracted by the colour which may or not be "true" given the variable lighting in some zoos (both natural and artificial and mixed).

[Jeremy Roussak]

The B&W shots are wonderful, Chris, particularly the tiger and the baby elephant. That was a well-spent six hours!

Jeremy

[PeterAit]

I particularly like the first one, too. Tell me, is he a Nikon guy or a Canon guy <g>?

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Thank you very much for the flowers everyone - means something!
The following images are coming from the bird department.
Cheers
~Chris

Pink Pelican

Playful Crowned Cranes

Flamingos #2

[cjogo]

Just wonderful images of fantastic creatures  :-)

[Steve Weldon]

Great photography coupled with artful post processing.  I could spend an hour listing all the positive points and how you managed to not miss a single opportunity to make them better.

But when I see them I'm sad.  And not because of the great photography, I'd feel the same sadness from a discount P&S in inexperienced hands.  Or even from the many memories I have of such places.

I used to spend weeks exploring a new zoo, and I'd travel far distances just to do the same with a new venue.

Eventually my travels took me to many places where these animals are indigenous and live as free as their poaching laws and enforcement allow.  It's an experience that must be lived, and it isn't complete without a thorough understanding of the local cultures which both protect and prey on these incredible resources.

Along the line I learned how zoo animals are not only robbed of their freedom and in many cases made to perform not unlike indentured servitude, but how they were also robbed of their minds through the daily doses of drugs many are given in their food.    Can you imagine being taken from your home and locked in a cage and if you dare rattle your food dish you're given drugs that made you forget today and tomorrow and the next day?  Or worse, born into this life without experiencing freedom ever.

While in Thailand I learned through investigation about the many ethical issues involved with the keeping of these creatures.  In short human greed knows no limits.

A properly and ethically ran wild animal park such as San Diego's excellent facility managed by committee is about as close to ideal as possible given the limitations, but I question their need because of such media as your excellent photography and the video realism we know is possible.   Will we enjoy seeing the animal more in person but from 50-100 feet away, or from 4k or better video captured in the wild?

As humans we have much to learn about taking things which aren't ours.

[pikeys]

Great photography coupled with artful post processing.  I could spend an hour listing all the positive points and how you managed to not miss a single opportunity to make them better.

But when I see them I'm sad.  And not because of the great photography, I'd feel the same sadness from a discount P&S in inexperienced hands.  Or even from the many memories I have of such places.

I used to spend weeks exploring a new zoo, and I'd travel far distances just to do the same with a new venue.

Eventually my travels took me to many places where these animals are indigenous and live as free as their poaching laws and enforcement allow.  It's an experience that must be lived, and it isn't complete without a thorough understanding of the local cultures which both protect and prey on these incredible resources.

Along the line I learned how zoo animals are not only robbed of their freedom and in many cases made to perform not unlike indentured servitude, but how they were also robbed of their minds through the daily doses of drugs many are given in their food.    Can you imagine being taken from your home and locked in a cage and if you dare rattle your food dish you're given drugs that made you forget today and tomorrow and the next day?  Or worse, born into this life without experiencing freedom ever.

While in Thailand I learned through investigation about the many ethical issues involved with the keeping of these creatures.  In short human greed knows no limits.

A properly and ethically ran wild animal park such as San Diego's excellent facility managed by committee is about as close to ideal as possible given the limitations, but I question their need because of such media as your excellent photography and the video realism we know is possible.   Will we enjoy seeing the animal more in person but from 50-100 feet away, or from 4k or better video captured in the wild?

As humans we have much to learn about taking things which aren't ours.

This is a photography forum,
Is it necessary that you give us a dissertation on Zoo ethics.
Comeon will you,the man took excellent photo,s ,we all enjoyed them
We're they treated badly?,did he disturb them in any way?
I understand how you feel,and I agree,with what you say.,just not in this forum.
Just my .02.
Again,they were all great images.

Mike

[Steve Weldon]

This is a photography forum,
Is it necessary that you give us a dissertation on Zoo ethics.
Comeon will you,the man took excellent photo,s ,we all enjoyed them
We're they treated badly?,did he disturb them in any way?
I understand how you feel,and I agree,with what you say.,just not in this forum.
Just my .02.
Again,they were all great images.

Mike

1.  I feel it's relevant and it's telling that you don't.  All the more reason for writing my post.  I barely touched on the subject because as you said, this is a critique forum.  But how his pictures made me "feel" is part of a critique.  It was written this way.

As photographers we have an ethical duty to support or not support such things.  An exception would be a journalistic/reporting approach and then they'd be quite different photographs.

2.   You're kidding right?  You're taking a tiger that normally has a 200 mile area they roam, often covering 20 or more miles a day, or a wolf with a 125 mile area that can travel up to 50 miles a day.. and lock them in a cage.  Even a "display area" is nothing more than a large pen with fake rocks and whatever else to make it look more appealing to the guests.. not the animal.  Then you drug them up so they're docile and please the crowds..  How would you like to be confined and pumped full of Thorazine when you complained, raised your voice, or did anything that came natural to you? 


I used to regularly take my workshop classes to the Bangkok wild animal park, the Tiger Zoo, the Tiger Temple, Elephant show area, Cobra/Mongoose show.. and lots of other places where animals were confined for the enjoyment of humans.  I won't go into what I found and documented here.. but after 12 years you start to break the surface and what's beneath isn't pretty.  It's dirty and leaves you feeling unclean.  I stopped using those venues and lost because because of it.. and that's okay with me.  Now I'll take them into the national forest where the animals run free and photographers earn their images in a very difficult way.  The look on their face when they nail one is priceless.  Beats the five minutes of "oh, this is nice" they get from zoos and parks.

And no, I'm not some PETA person or any kind of activist at all.. I'm normally conservative.  But when you bother to educate your self on what's happening to our world.. animals includes.. it's disheartening to say the least.

His photos were very good.  But they made me sad.   I told him why.  And now I've explained again because you asked.    Any image that brings on discussion about important things holds a lot more value than a normal pretty picture.

Be careful out there..

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Honestly - when I took the image of the tiger (He was in his cage and I blurred out the fence) it gave me the creeps and
I personally have a very ambivalent attitude towards zoos.
I attached an unaltered Jpeg of the tiger image to this thread to allow you to see more of the "other side" of it.

While I generally agree to many points of what Steve has written,
the other side is, that many children, especially in large cities,
never get an opportunity to see this variety of animals elsewhere.
I believe a zoo can possibly serve a purpose of educating and
giving those children an opportunity to get at least a sort of limited relation to these animals
like experiencing in direct contact, that there are other beings on this planet beside us humans.
I can not judge how far these animals really suffer, but
thinking of the gazillion dogs and cats living under highly problematic circumstances,
we can see that zoos are only a small part of the overall problem.

Expressing feelings evoked by these images is perfectly okay and encouraged - I mean - what more can I wish for as a photographer?

Despite that, I would suggest to discuss the issue of captivating animals, if desired in an extra thread in the Coffee Corner and
keep this thread clear from further discussion, to allow it keep its purpose of discussing the images in themselves.
I believe the ethics of taking images should not be left out when taking images, and I am perfectly okay with discussing the issue, but
also believe an extra thread (maybe with a link to this one here) would be a better place to do so.


I personally hope, that my images, though staged and not focusing on the negative side of captivity,
give an impression of the dignity and beauty of these animals,
because I believe that's the best way to get a healthy relation to them and see them as fellow beings on this planet.
On the contrary, my images do not have the purpose of documenting the captivity - they serve a different purpose,
of which I believe it serves better creating respect instead of inducing guilt and moral complications in the minds of the viewer.
Guilt is always a bad foundation for any kind of relation.

Cheers
~Chris

[kencameron]

Despite that, I would suggest to discuss the issue of captivating animals, if desired in an extra thread in the Coffee Corner and
keep this thread clear from further discussion, to allow it keep its purpose of discussing the images in themselves.
I believe the ethics of taking images should not be left out when taking images, and I am perfectly okay with discussing the issue, but
also believe an extra thread (maybe with a link to this one here) would be a better place to do so.

Interesting. I  agree that a wide-ranging general discussion of the ethics of keeping animals in captivity might belong in a different thread, but I think there is also something to be said in this thread. I love the photographs, and I also agree with Steve that there is an element of sadness about them that may derive from the fact that the animals are in captivity. That sadness is surely just as much part of the excellence of the photographs as are technical elements such as sharpness, composition etc. Surely depicting the sadness of animals in captivity is a legitimate aspiration for a photographer, and there is no inconsistency between having reservations about Zoos and taking photographs in them. War photographers don't neccessarily approve of war.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Interesting. I  agree that a wide-ranging general discussion of the ethics of keeping animals in captivity might belong in a different thread, but I think there is also something to be said in this thread. I love the photographs, and I also agree with Steve that there is an element of sadness about them that may derive from the fact that the animals are in captivity. That sadness is surely just as much part of the excellence of the photographs as are technical elements such as sharpness, composition etc. Surely depicting the sadness of animals in captivity is a legitimate aspiration for a photographer, and there is no inconsistency between having reservations about Zoos and taking photographs in them. War photographers don't neccessarily approve of war.

Exactly.
Thats why I also wrote:

Expressing feelings evoked by these images is perfectly okay and encouraged - I mean - what more can I wish for as a photographer?

Cheers
~Chris

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Allright - here are my favourite edits from today
from the "Ice World" department ...
Cheers
~Chris

Ice Bear

Walrus

Seal

[Steve Weldon]

and there is no inconsistency between having reservations about Zoos and taking photographs in them. War photographers don't neccessarily approve of war.

This depends on the context.  I stopped going to these venues and bringing them paying customers because I could no longer support their business.  And make no mistake, all these places are about business and making money. 

However, as I did with one animal park in Oregon (they were sponsoring after hours fighting between species and were even breeding special fighting mixes) I participated on the surface, my real purpose in being there was to expose them.   And I did.  And this was before I stopped going to these places on principal, but it was part of my decision.  Like you said, a war photographer is there to record the war, no other agenda (unless they work for any of the popular news organizations).. but they're also not paying or supporting the way in any way.

[pikeys]

Chris,
Absolutly beautiful
#1 is perfect

Please note-If I offended anyone with my previous post,forgive me-I meant no harm in my reply,and I should have toned it down some

Mike