The Quiet Picture

It’s the coldest day of the winter so far, around -20°C. It was  -22°C when got up and the strange thing is that unless my memory totally fails me, it’s colder than it was last winter. Last winter was special in that the cold period lasted such a long time, but up here in Loos the temperatures never plummeted as seriously as it did in the lowlands. It happened a number of times that when I went to work, it was about -20°C in Loos but when I got to work, people were saying they had temperatures all the way down to -30°C. Warm air rises up… It’s not unusual that it’s 5 degrees colder down at the lake than it’s at home.

Anyway, as much as I like skiing and as little as I mind cold weather, I draw a line at -20°C. No point in risking my lungs. So today I will concentrate on indoors activities and I started by playing around in Lightroom. I created a collection of all my unprocessed pictures to see if I could find something worthy of working on and I was shocked to see that I had almost 3000 unprocessed photos… I had no idea it was that bad! I expected they would all be from my pre-Lightroom era but there were hundreds of pictures even from recent years.

In the end I decided to take something really old and see if I could make anything out of my first year of digital shooting (with the 3MP Canon D30). There was this special day in Järvzoo in May 2002, I got to witness the birth of two moose calves. I shot a lot of pictures just to document the event, but obviously it’s difficult to make anything photographically outstanding of such an event (say what you may about giving birth, but it’s really very messy!). After the calves were born, I did my round in the zoo and on the way back I visited the moose enclosure again and found the calves on their feet, nuzzling up against the new mom. Sweet!

May is a good month for other animal babies as well. The ural owls are cute, they leave the nest while they’re all fuzzy and they stood all lined up on the branch. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera ready when all five of them were sitting in a row, but at least I caught three. The light was difficult and I couldn’t fade out the net with the Sigma 170-500mm lens I was using back then so I just simply underexposed the background in Lightroom until I got rid of the net, and concentrated the light on the owls.

Spring is almost around the corner…

Visited Järvzoo today. A somewhat windy day with grey overcast skies, absolutely hopeless for landscape photography and I don’t want to do a 2nd straight weekend of nothing but bird photography, so the zoo sounded like a good idea. I didn’t have any expectations though, there wasn’t a lot of light for shooting in the forest so I was fully prepared to be happy if I could get just one nice picture. It turned out that I got more than just one so it was definitely a good visit, and the best part of it is that I finally got a nice picture of an arctic fox! After all these years of visiting Järvzoo, I only had one arctic fox picture and I’ve kept it in my library for comic relief, because it only shows the back of the fox. But now, finally, I got the face as well! Granted, spruce forest is not the natural environment for an arctic fox but I’m not even trying to pass it as an authentic wild animal, so I’ll treat it for what it is – a zoo picture. I liked the way the spruce branches formed a frame around the fox and it seems like I made more use of the OOF foreground on this visit than I normally do… sometimes the bricks just fall that way.

Snow leopard.

Snow leopard in the Orsa Björnpark Zoo.

I’m so there! Snow leopards are my favourite felines and I really, really wanted to see one. The last time I saw a snow leopard was ages ago back when I lived in England and it was love at first sight.So on this visit, I hoped I could at least see a snow leopard and maybe with some luck, get some pictures as well.

Since we’ve already had good opportunities to see wolves and lynx and other Nordic animals at Järvzoo, we walked right past the “domestic” enclosures to get to the tigers and leopards. I found the tigers a bit difficult at first, just couldn’t get a good angle, until this one tiger was kind enough to sit down on top of the hill with some forest far back in the distance. It’s probably my favourite picture from this trip, even if it required some editing because there was small tree sticking up from behind the tiger and I needed to get rid of it.

So what about the snow leopard then? It was starting to look like I wouldn’t get any pictures of it. It has a hideaway in the middle of the enclosure and it wasn’t in any hurry to come out. The closing time was approaching and half of our group had already headed back to the exit, but we still had a few minutes until closing time so we made a last effort at both the persian leopards and the snow leopard, neither of which I had any pictures of so far (I’m not counting the snow-leopard-in-the-dark-hideaway frame).

And so our persistence was rewarded – the snow leopard made an appearance!  I could hardly believe my eyes. Then of course I found out that my 300mm lens was too long to fit the snow leopard and its long tail in one frame, so I had to try stitching. I thought I had it, but then at home when I attempted the stitch, it didn’t work at all – it turned out that the leopard had moved right at the moment I reframed for the second picture so nothing was matching in the pictures! But this cat is sure worth the effort, so I took those two pictures and at first I matched the backgrounds. Then I just simply extracted half the animal and re-fitted it in the background and quite amazingly, it actually works. It’s still not a good picture by any means, but it wouldn’t be a good picture even if the stitch had worked straight-out, that background is nothing to cheer at. But honestly, it’s a snow leopard. I’m happy!

Photography in a zoo on a sunny day in May can be a tough affair. Contrasty light and animals shedding fur, not the easiest of conditions. So imagine my surprise when the frame count kept creeping up, I never thought that was possible. On the other hand, because of the conditions, I kept taking the same pictures with different settings and hoped that I could rescue something out of one of the versions.

Or then it was constant action and I was just trying to keep up. Like this wolf coming ever closer to me, sniffing and digging the ground. Needless to say I was amazed that the only shot that wasn’t instantly trashable had the wolf licking its nose! Mind you, by this time the wolf was so close to me that I was shooting down on it, and with the sun high up in the sky the eye is half shaded. And I’m sure nobody noticed that one ear is missing?

When we got to the muskox enclosure, we found one of the oxen lying down in a shaded corner. Well, partly shaded anyway – cue horrible contrast between the highlights in the horns and the shadows in the dark fur. But I was able to rescue one of the frames in Lightroom, even if I had to convert it to B&W which is more forgiving to all the local exposure adjustments I had to do.

At the bear enclosure, I was really struggling with my fixed 300mm lens. The bear cub was sleeping by the momma bear’s side with the paws turned up so just for once it wasn’t so bad to be shooting straight down. But it was absolutely impossible to get the whole cub in the frame, so I tried stitching. It was a shaded spot so I had to use a long-ish shutter speed and it turned out that it was too long – for every series of pictures I took, at least one of the frames was too shaken for the stitch to work. I only had one series which was borderline ok, but by then the cub had changed position a little bit so the paws were not as nicely positioned as here.

And would you know, at the wolverine enclosure I was shooting down again. But this is the first time I had a close look at a wolverine eye, and I was surprised to see what shape the pupil is. See for yourself!

I completed my full house of looking-down pictures at the lynx enclosure. The lynx enclosure in Järvzoo is notoriously difficult for any eye-level pictures anyway, but I just love that furry face and those yellow eyes! And I’m sure that nobody missed the missing ear again?

All in all, it was a good visit. Not the ideal conditions and way too much looking down (a big no-no in animal photography), but somehow I’m still happy with the results. Orsa Björnpark next!

Yesterday was about as un-interesting as it gets, photographically speaking. Today would’ve been ever worse, so a visit to the zoo was just the ticket to lift up the weekend. I was hoping to get some pictures of the wolves, it’s almost three years since from my last wolf pictures and that’s just too long for my favourite animals.

Since the snow was looking rather ugly with the recent weather, I figured that I should use the 1.4 teleconverter to be able to isolate the animals from the background. When I was at the wolf enclosure, I discovered quickly that 300mm times crop sensor times TC equals too much reach – I could barely fit the animals in the frame! The first wolf pose is full frame and it’s tight. So I removed the TC and framing was easier, although that 300mm x crop sensor can still be a bit much. Especially when you meet friendly wolverines who’ll happily come right up to you to check if it’s a taste bit of meat or a camera in my hand. Since I had very little margin for composition error, I managed clip off the tips of the tail hairs of the sitting wolverine. I had to do some serious post-editing to add some pixels on the left and then try to fake the tail end. I can see it’s fake, but I’m not sure if it’s so obvious when you don’t know what was done?

At feeding time, the keeper was kind enough to put a piece of meat on a branch of the pine. I just had time to flip the camera vertically but it when it came down to it, I failed with it again – just couldn’t fit the fully stretched wolverine in the frame. This one worked because the tail is hidden, although to be honest the face suffers a little bit of motion blur. But I just can’t delete my only tree climbing wolverine picture!

All in all a nice visit in good company, the pictures aren’t stellar but at least I learned that I do not need to use the teleconverter in Järvzoo!

The more I use Lightroom the more I like it. I’m not an expert user but I’m learning, and it seems like my vision is changing in sync with my processing skills. What I thought was perfectly processed a year ago needs re-processing now.

When I was working on Monday’s zoo pictures, LR really proved its worth. I’m totally in love with this tiger at the moment, maybe I’ll grow tired of the picture soon but right now I’m just patting myself at the back for a job well done. I don’t often get to feel like this about my pictures, if I get one such every year I’m happy.

I think what attracts me about the picture is the intensity. At first it’s of course the intense look, but then as I started processing the image to get rid of the grey film that the fence created, I also started to intensify the colours and the tiger’s stripes. Everything has to “pop” – the look in the eye, the colours, and the pattern. All the while trying to minimise the effect of the fence, which is still visible in the background, at least if you know to look for it.

When I was finished with the processing and looked at the before/after comparison, I was impressed that it could all be done in Lightroom with what really amounts to basic adjustments (just quite a few of them). I didn’t even use the clone/heal tool! And like I said, I’m not an advanced user, I haven’t explored the full potential of LR and I don’t know any fancy processing tricks. But I’m learning and maybe a year from now I will come back to this picture and find that it needs to be re-processed because my vision has been re(de)fined along with my LR skills!

I know I’ve talked about about zoos before and I think I might have even said that I will never visit one again, but I now solemnly swear that I will never promise I will never visit another zoo. The issue of captive animals, for and against, it’s been discussed already and now I just want to write about these animals at Orsa Björnpark. Specifically, polar bears and tigers which were the animals I was really keen on seeing in the first place.

But I’ll just say a few words about the zoo first. It’s a bit like Järvzoo, with all the domestic predators (brown bear, wolf, lynx, wolverine) but they also have some “foreign” animals – kamchatka brown bears, polar bears and siberian tigers. They will add leopards in the summer, but even so, the number of species in this zoo is low. The enclosures on the other hand are very big, which is nice for the animals but not so nice for the photographers. The chain link fences don’t help either; they’re good for keeping the animals in and people out, but a photographer needs to use all the tricks in the book to eliminate the distractions.

My secret weapon was the 300mm f4 lens. Shooting wide open of course, so no margin for error. The weather was on our side because it was overcast, otherwise the chain link fence would’ve been impossible to fade out. It turned out that 300mm was a tad too much at times and I had to make most of my compositions in vertical format, otherwise I didn’t stand a chance to frame in an animal without cutting off any important body parts. The tigers were so close that I ever struggled to get a whole head in the frame! But other than the photographic dilemma, it was pretty amazing to be so close to the magnificent animals. And just when I thought that they were looking really cuddly, one of them yawned right in front of me and revealed a sharp line of pearly whites, complete with 4-inch fangs. So that chain link fence was kinda nice, after all…

The polar bears were in a playful mood. They have an open pool of water that still has some ice cover left, and these two bears decided to reduce the ice cover and started hopping on it until a big raft of ice broke off, making a nice new plaything for them. It was non-stop action with the polar bears so it was hard to keep the pace, especially when I had to nail the composition because the bears were close enough to leave me with a tight framing. Normally I like tight frames, but I would’ve been happy with less of a challenge to nail it in camera… however, it was very nice to see the polar bears, this is only the second time I’ve ever seen them.

I think it counts as a good visit. Out of those two species I wanted to see and photograph, I saw and photographed both. I even got some pictures I’m really happy with, I would’ve settled with one good picture of each but I got much more than that!

I know I said that I would never go to a zoo again, but I had an opportunity to meet with other photographers so I caved in.

For every visit to Järvzoo, my only wish is to get good pictures of one species – you can never get them all anyway, so one is good. The birds are the trickiest ones and the great grey owl (Strix nebulosa) has always eluded me, I’ve never succeeded in creating a single keeper after years of trying. Until now, that is – I was fortunate enough to have the camera ready when the owl yawned, and I was amazed to see that the picture is sharp!

I’ve mentioned a few times that I gave up on wildlife photography early on in my photography career. Most of the animal photography I’ve done since then is in zoos – not counting the occasional squirrel, of course! When I lived in Ljusdal, I used to visit Järvzoo quite often. Since I moved to Loos, the visits have been few and far in between. In fact, today was only my second visit in over 3 years.

The day’s favourite species – wolverine (cropped from right to 4:5)

One of the highlights of any Järvzoo visit is the wolves. Usually when I visit Järvzoo, I make sure to get to the wolves well before the feeding time. There’s a lot of activity going on while they wait for the grub, but now I found the whole thing oddly unsatisfying. There’s a whole new pack of wolves, but I recognised the behaviour patterns immediately. And why not… it’s just typical wolf behaviour. Typical wolf behaviour, for captive wolves. I must admit that I felt sorry for them. They are magnificent animals, they should be running free and not kept in a cage. But that’s the whole zoo debate. Should we or should we not cage wild animals?

I’ve always felt that we should have zoos. They serve two purposes – first and foremost, conservation. And secondly, it’s the only chance most people ever have to see these wild species. And the second point actually also counts towards conservation. People need to be educated. Trying to protect these same animals completely in the wild is just simply not realistic. Take the wolf for example. We have resident wolves in this area, and there’s a constant debate whether or not we should have them. People take any excuse to shoot them legally, and if they don’t get a permit, then they shoot them illegally. Only thing that helps is that a new generation grows up, with appreciation for the wild and the will to co-exist. A visit to the zoo, and a chance to see the wolves close-up, goes a long way to convince the kids that wolves are not the beasts their parents claim they are.

The way the world is today, zoos are needed. They are the Noah’s Ark. And despite it – or maybe it’s actually just because of it? – a wild animal in a cage is just wrong.

End of rant, and back to my visit. While I was standing in front of the wolf enclosure, I got a bit disheartened. I already had a bunch of pictures, and zero inspiration to get any more. On my way back, this lynx caught my attention though. It seemed so content to lie there up on the cliff, in the sun, lazily watching the people passing by. I’ve seen my share of stress behaviour in captive animals (shame on the zoos!), but this was one cool cat that seemed quite content with the circumstances. It lifted my spirits, but I can’t help but feel that this was my last visit to Järvzoo – or any zoo, for that matter. My head says yes, and my heart says no.

I think I will stick to the squirrels now.

I went to the zoo today. Perfect weather – sunshine and a little bit of snowfall. At the same time. A few years ago I visited the zoo almost every other week, but after I started shooting film I gave up on that and then I moved to Los which added 50km between me and Järvzoo. So it was interesting to see what has changed in the zoo since my last visit. The biggest thing is that they have finished the 5 Stora (Big 5) exhibition, which turned out to be quite of an information package that I didn’t have the energy to go through in detail after 3 hours of walking back and forth in the park. The rest of the park was the same as before, other than the new wolf enclosure in conjunction with the 5 Stora exhibit. I saw three wolves sleeping when I got in to the park, and the same three wolves sleeping in the same place on my out of the park… I guess they forgot the “out of order” sign (you’ll have to have seen “Fierce Creatures” to get the joke!). There were two other wolves in the old wolf enclosure and at feeding time, the keeper told me that they currently don’t have any female wolves but are expecting to get one soon from another zoo. Speaking of the feeding, the keeper went in the enclosure to throw in the meat. Lucky bastard.

Back when I visited Järvzoo frequently, I used to think that if I got a good image of any of the animals, the visit was successful (my standard for “good” was a bit lower than it is today). Some of the species are more difficult to shoot than others – say for example, the dark animals like musk ox and wolverine are impossible unless it’s bright and sunny. Otherwise the contrast between the subject and snow is too big. The lynx are also tricky – the enclosure is more like a pit where you look straight down on the animals. This is a big no-no for photography… can’t shoot them from above! There are only a few spots in the enclosure where you are at eye level with the lynx so good luck with that. Not to mention that the enclosure is very dark as it’s almost always in the shade. The little sunlight that gets in is patchy as it’s filtered through a pine forest.

What might come as a surprise is that you need a long lens even in a zoo. The musk ox image is taken with 300mm plus 1.4 converter (that’s effective 672mm) and still the animal doesn’t fill up the frame. Today in the zoo there happened to be a lot of other photographers as well, and one of them was carrying a 500mm lens. I didn’t see him use it though… mostly he was shooting with his film camera (he had film & digital bodies) and 100-400mm lens, which means that he didn’t have the same reach I had. I wonder how his images turned out… I’m not saying that bigger is better at all, but I’m always curious to see how other people portray the same subject.

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I’ve often wondered if I should learn more languages. I met a couple of photographers today who spoke French and German (and no English) but it didn’t help them so I guess I shouldn’t bother!