Member's Day at Chester

MORE MONKEY PORTRAITS

20th April 2013

Chester Zoo has three Member’s Days each year. Members can bring guests at reduced prices and they get a few little freebies too, although I have never bothered to use any of my free monorail tickets. There is also a programme of meetings with keepers, which can be interesting. It was a very busy day as Member’s Day coincided with the first nice Saturday in weeks, so the zoo was expecting more than ten thousand visitors (and I would be surprised if they didn’t exceed that number).

It’s an interesting time at the Zoo because work has just started on the Islands exhibit which is a major extension on undeveloped land behind the oryx enclosure. It is due to open in two years time, which might seem slow going, but after all the great crested newts are moved, a big new tropical house will be built for birds, crocodiles and Sumatran orang utans, with a smaller house for Komodo dragons. There will also be a new waterway for boat rides, enclosure complexes for the orangs, Sumatran tigers (with a tunnel), aviaries for hornbills and various other livestock. Then it will take time to install drains, filters, heating systems and visitor facilities, more time for planting and theming and finally of course the animals will have to be settled in.

Zoos always aim to have new exhibits open around Easter, when visitor numbers start to rise during the school holidays, but before the peak visiting period in summer. This year’s developments at Chester are linked to the planning for Islands. There is a new off-show breeding aviary complex which may be used to raise birds for Islands. The old crane aviary has been turned into a bird rearing unit, particularly for cranes and waterfowl, which will be interesting. A couple of new species are already on show, but they will eventually move into Islands: a Malayan tapir is in the old Cattle House instead of the wart hogs and Javan banteng have replaced the bongos near the old entrance. The bongos have been moved next to the zebras in the West Zoo. Many of the other animals for Islands are already kept in the Zoo; once they are moved we expect that their current enclosures will be renovated for further new species.

Of course I had my camera with me, but as I spent so much time talking with friends and a couple of keepers, I didn’t take my usual number of photos. I did spend some time in Miniature Monkeys where the golden-headed lion tamarins and emperor tamarins had been moved back to their old enclosure and were calling loudly to each other as they explored the trees. It needed patience to get good views and even more to get some photos, particularly when the sunlight was filtered by the leaves, but I got a couple of decent shots with my trusty 500mm tele. The first is a sort of MGM shot, (although lion tamarins don't roar, they chirp), the second is a moment of caution while checking it is safe to descend to the ground.

Chester’s monkey house only holds four species, but they are all kept in big groups, so there is always something going on. Their outdoor enclosures are large and thickly planted so it can be difficult to see the monkeys if they don’t come near the moats. I was lucky to get good views of this lion-tailed macaque and young mandrill.

At the end of the day, I was walking with a couple of friends when we found the aardvarks were active. I confess that I had never seen them awake before, so I was pleased that the light was still good enough for me to get decent results with my 105mm lens.

Metropolitan Miscellany

LONDON ZOO

14th April 2013

My time for photography in the past few weeks has been limited by the weather and a heavy schedule of decorating and refurbishing. However as I was in London for the Man Ray show I took the chance to go to the Zoo as the weather was nice and I reckon that there are more subjects per square metre in Regents Park than anywhere else in the UK.

As I have been visiting the Zoo for more than 40 years, I have seen a lot of changes. Most of them have been very much for the better, but I am not convinced by all of them. London Zoo is handicapped by the high costs of its location and by a number of dreadfully bad buildings, which some moron decided should be listed in spite of the fact that they are useless. If I ruled the world, the Casson building (originally the elephant house) would be rubble within a week and anyone who wanted the quaint Tecton penguin pool would have 30 days to remove it before it suffered the same fate. That would give space for some proper monkey enclosures, rather than a few left over from the Sobell pavilion and a couple originally designed for small cats. 

The only modern monkey enclosure is the outdoor one constructed for the group of white-naped mangabeys, which make a good show. This is the youngest infant. I’m sure there was trouble when mother saw that dirty face. All the photos in this blog were taken with my 500mm lens, unless otherwise specified.

 

 The mangabey paterfamilias is an impressive animal.

On the other hand, the old Bird House has been remodelled rather nicely and renamed as the Blackburn Pavilion. I particularly like the large indoor aviary, which has well-balanced spaces for birds and visitors, good planting and a very interesting collection of birds. I think my favourite species is the little blue-crowned lory – there was only one on show and I think it was just completing its moult, but even so it looked stunning. 

I didn’t get any shots of the blue grosbeak and only poor ones of the male sugarbird and the African pygmy geese, but the male splendid sunbird posed for me beautifully. It may seem strange to use a long telephoto lens in such a relatively small space, particularly as most of the birds are quite tame: but I find it helps to isolate the bird in the vegetation. The light is quite good on a nice day, but it is a test of technique and as I use the lowest ISO setting to get full image quality I expect quite a lot of shots to fail due to movement and focus error. On the other hand when everything works well the images can be exciting.

There were more of these sunbirds in the little individual hummingbird flights, together with this nice emerald hummingbird. I think it is the only one on public display in the UK at the moment. This shot was taken with my 105mm macro lens.

I also like the new outdoor aviaries, except that they now have shiny steel mesh which reduces contrast when you shoot through it (unlike black painted wire which can be made to disappear in photos). However it is possible to process the images to get a full tonal range; I used Nikon Capture NX2 to set black and white control points for this shot of a buff-banded rail sunbathing.

 

With care, the 500mm lens also gives good images through the strong wires of the big macaw and cockatoo aviary. I would have liked to shoot the pair of Banksian cockatoos, but they were perched too close to the wire. This green-winged macaw was nibbling the vegetation on the ground, which was much more convenient.

Regular zoo-goers will realise that all the birds I have mentioned are species that you won’t see in other British zoos, except for the macaw. A slightly more common species is the green peafowl seen in the Snowdon Aviary – it is even more handsome than the common blue peafowl. A shot with my 105mm lens - it's not just for macro work.

On the other hand the remodelled Clore Pavilion is not really to my taste. The nocturnal section was once home to a huge range of exotic species, I am happy that they have given the animals more space by doubling up the exhibits – but in my opinion brown rats and chinchillas belong in pet shops, particularly as so many of the old enclosures have been removed or taken off-show. The same could be said about the diurnal exhibits – half of the old enclosures are now off-show. I have mixed feelings about the central rainforest hall, it does give the tamarins and titis a nice space, but it’s not a good way of showing the sloth, tamandua or armadillo. I had a good opportunity to shoot with my 105mm macro when this young emperor tamarin came close to the visitor's balcony.

 

The major new exhibits, Gorilla Kingdom, Penguin Beach and Tiger Territory are all considerable improvements on what went before, although I feel that providing each one with a fluffy toy kiosk is commercial overkill. I got a glimpse of Kumbuka, the male gorilla, who arrived from Paignton a few days before my visit; he was looking around from the bridge over the public corridor, between the gorilla’s off-show area and their indoor dayroom. It was amusing to see Effie and Mjukuu jostling each other as they tried to find the best spot for watching him. Gorillas are sensitive animals and it will take weeks of step-by-step introductions before Kumbuka is swaggering around the enclosure in proper silverback fashion.

I regret that I only had time for a quick trot around the aquarium, but I always take my time in the Reptile House. It’s still the best display of reptiles in the UK and the new amphibian area is a great improvement on the small enclosures it has replaced. Here is a Mallorcan midwife tadpole which is almost ready to leave the water - another macro shot of course.

I must admit that my favourite animals in the zoo are the strange but elegant pig-nosed turtles (also called Fly River turtles). Their aquarium has scratches on the front glass, so I had to do some cloning on the image below, which I took with my 30mm f/1.4 Sigma lens. You can see the frame holding lights above the containers for the side-necked terrapins behind the turtle's tank.

These turtles are very special: they have no close relatives, although they in some ways they resemble marine turtles because they are entirely aquatic, only leaving the water to nest.

I do like the way that the ZSL collections balance the crowd-pleasing animals like tigers and gorillas with strange and beautiful creatures like these.

UPDATE 

Last night  (24th July) ITV broadcast the final episode of their series 'The Zoo'. Shooting for this episode was finished in the weeks after my visit. It showed the adult male magabey shown above: his name is Lucky and he is wild-caught from Ghana. His genes are so important for the future of the species in European zoos that two new females have been added to the group. The main storyline was about the introduction of Kumbuka to the female gorillas, it ended with a sequence when he mated with Mjukuu. Fingers crossed.

That man Man

MAN RAY my favourite photographer

15th April 2013

A long time ago a famous novelist appeared in a TV advertisement. She said “I’m careful what I read. One should never read rubbish, it could be infectious. One might start writing it.” As she picked up a newspaper the message appeared ‘Edna O’Brien reads The Guardian.’ 
I take a similar view of photography, so I'm careful about the photographs I view.

I didn't want to miss the exhibition of Man Ray's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery so I made a special trip to London this week. I admire Man Ray's imagination, his eye for form and detail and some of his technical tricks too. I like the fact that he didn’t take photography too seriously, but as he belonged to the Dada group and then the Surrealists it was just one of the ways he used to express himself. As an artist he painted, wrote, made objects and created films: he took up photography to record works of art and to earn a living. He always had his own ideas, but he took a real interest in other artists and their ideas too, as his portraits show (although he took many other types of photo too).

There were one or two prints that I had seen exhibited before and more that I knew from books, but many of them were quite new to me. It is always interesting to see a photographer’s own prints, in this exhibition there are some little contact prints which are marked for cropping when enlarged. Fortunately I carry a little plastic Fresnel magnifier with my credit cards, so I could examine them quite well.

His ability was made clear in one of the earliest photos on show, a beautifully lit profile of his great friend Marcel Duchamp (who was so important in the rise of modernism) from 1916. There are many other portraits of artists, models and fashions from Paris in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘50s and from Hollywood in the ‘40s. It was nice to see the famous images of Kiki de Montparnasse and Lee Miller again. I was impressed by his ability to capture something more than the formal pose - I now have clear memories of Erik Satie’s chuckle, Lady Diana Cooper’s eyes, Picasso’s hands, the angle of Le Corbusier’s head, Virginia Woolf’s animation in conversation and the poise of Ava Gardner. The photo that I really coveted was a tiny circular colour print of the face and hands of Juliet Greco, it could be kept in a jewelled case like a Hilliard miniature or mass produced as a lapel button.

Man Ray is famous for his so-called solarised portraits, which actually use the Sabattier effect. It is said that he was working in the darkroom with Lee Miller (his assistant and lover at the time) when a mouse ran over her foot and she turned the light on while the plate was in the developer. Man Ray was struck by the effect and learned how to master it. I really liked two beautiful Sabattier portraits of Schiaparelli and Leslie Caron

I bought a print of his famous solarised profile of Lee Miller, which I think is one of the most beautiful photographs ever made, plus a catalogue which I look forward to studying in detail. I thoroughly recommend the exhibition: the links below give a little taste of the master’s work.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9553243/Man-Ray-National-Portrait-Gallery-stages-first-museum-exhibition-devoted-to-photographers-portraits.html?frame=2344537 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9818030/Man-Rays-greatest-portraits.html?frame=2458468 

Principally Primates

Another day at Paignton Zoo

28th March 2013

 

Each time I visit a zoo I learn a bit more - it may be about the best time to see an animal or the best place to stand to view or photograph a particular enclosure. I try to remember each point for future visits, but I also keep my eyes open and look for fresh opportunities.
The Allen's swamp monkeys gave me an example. Their enclosure is roughly triangular and is bordered by streams and hotwire barriers, which are good for photography. The island has a large fallen tree trunk and a thick covering of low shrubs (I think it's an evergreen Cotoneaster) where the monkeys spend a lot of time foraging. As I walked up I saw that they were shut outside while a keeper was cleaning their house. The little female kept climbing on top of the tree truck, looking along the path and calling. She was at a nice distance for a shot with my 500mm lens except that I had to look directly into the sun, I had a look through the viewfinder and I saw that the small leaves of the shrubs reflecting the sunlight made an interesting background and the light passing through the long hairs around her head made a partial halo. A purely pictorial effect, but I liked it. The potential problems were catching her mouth open and giving the right exposure to show the details of her face. A quick trial shot and a histogram check showed that my Nikon's exposure was good for this contre-jour lighting, so then it just took patience to shoot a series as she repeatedly returned to her vantage point and called (until another keeper arrived with their feed).

The ability to check exposure and framing is one of the great advantages of digital photography: the photographer's term for this activity is one of my favourites, because looking at your images can be exciting if you happen to see one or two good ones so you naturally make "oo oo" noises, hence the name is chimping :) You just have to try to contain your excitement.

I avoid chimping, but I would be happy to gorilla if I could. My favourite subject 'Kumbuka' was out in spite of the cold. Now that he is a silverback, he has to kept on his own so that he can't challenge the dominant male 'Pertinax' or disturb the hierarchy of the blackback males. He has first use of the island in the morning, but he goes into his den for lunch and the other gorillas go outside in the afternoon. I may be wrong to use the present tense here as he may already have gone to Regents Park to lead London's gorilla group. He is a very handsome animal and he is genetically important as he and his half brother are the only surviving offspring of a wild-caught male, so it would be very welcome if he breeds with 'Effie' and 'Mujukuu'. For various reasons the last three males at ZSL have not been successful, so everyone hopes he will become a good group leader and eventually a father there.

I tried to get contre-jour shots of his breath condensing in the cold air, but it didn't show up well. The alternative was to shoot from the other side of the island with the sun behind me. This shot pleases me, I think because the angle of his head shows the height of his crest and it also allows the light from the sun (still quite low in the sky) to illuminate his eyes.

I think I realised subconsciously that it was primate portrait day. I was soon in Monkey Heights working on the white-faced saki monkeys, this is a subadult (only adult males have white faces). This was shot through very fine mesh, almost at the minimum focus distance for the 500mm. I love this lens because it is very sharp and because it simplifies the composition of the images, making them very direct.

I think this is 'Katya' a female cherry-crowned mangabey. The zoo has a nice group of these attractive monkeys with a newborn infant too. Unfortunately for some reason they have the habit of plucking the red hairs from their crowns, which really spoils their looks. 'Katya' is the only one who has escaped. I love her sweeping whiskers. Shot through green-painted, heavy-gauge wire - but I don't think you can tell from the image. It's a pity I clipped the tips of the hairs on her crown.

I couldn't pass by this grey-winged trumpeter. It had flown up to a perch and it was sunbathing with its wings spread. I managed to include a glimpse of the tuft of blue feathers on the breast of the bird - the only bright colour in its sombre plumage. I have tried to convince myself that I don't mind the tartan background (wire mesh, vegetation and sky) - without complete success.

This shot was a bit of an afterthought near the end of my visit after clouds had obscured the sun. The yellow-shouldered amazon is a real rara avis and I wanted a record shot. The framing was difficult as they were at the back of their aviary and I was shooting between their perches. It's far from brilliant, but I feel that the combination of the individual poses makes it a little more than a record.

Diffuse light from a cloudy sky suits some creatures. I had put the long lens away and just used the 105mm for this shot of a red panda which came quite close to pose. It's easy to overexpose the white face and lose highlight detail in bright sunlight, but this lighting worked nicely and the evergreens in the enclosure provide both foreground and background.

. . . and a little bonus

The ostrich and zebra paddock was very popular with wild birds. Apart from the inevitable herring gulls and wood pigeons, it also attracted magpies, a robin, blackbirds, a song thrush and a splendid pair of mistle thrushes. One of them came well within the range of my 500mm with hastily fitted 1.4x converter.

Copyright and Creative Commons

A learning experience

As you may have noticed, I generally copyright all my images. My camera is set up to add copyright information to each one and I add a strapline to each photo that I post here and on Flickr (although under UK law this is not strictly necessary, if I understand the situation correctly).
I don't do this in the expectation of making money from them, because I do not have the property releases that most of my best images would need for commercial use on stock libraries and so on. Indeed I am happy to allow them to be used gratis for educational and charitable purposes, but I expect to be asked to give my permission. I was once tricked into allowing one of my photos to be used in a creationist publication and I am determined never to let this happen again.
However a few days ago I was contacted by someone who was editing the Wikipedia page on the black lion tamarin. He had seen a photo of this species that I had posted on Flickr a few years ago and he asked if I would remove the copyright on that image and then give it a Creative Commons licence so that he could add it to the page, following Wikipedia's policy. I wanted to help him; so after a little research, I replied that I was reluctant to change the designation of that image, but that I had two similar photos from the same sequence which I would let him use.
We agreed on this. I processed these images from my RAW files and changed the IPTC information embedded in these images before posting them on Flickr with an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA).
I had not realised that there are several types of licence until I read the appropriate page of the Creative Commons website (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/). I quote the terms of this one (with apologies for the American English spelling)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

I was prepared to do this as a one-off gesture to show my support for Wikipedia and for black lion tamarin conservation, but I would prefer to use a more restrictive licence which does not allow use for commercial purposes. However I do not plan to change my general rule of copyrighting my work.

So if you happen to need a photo of a black lion tamarin (also known as a golden-rumped lion tamarin) here is your chance. The photos were taken at Bristol Zoo in May 2009.

It's probably worth adding that there aren't many good photos of these animals around. Their close relatives, the golden lion tamarin and the golden-headed lion tamarin, are rather more attractive and are kept and bred in many zoos, although they are endangered in the wild: there have been successful reintroductions of captive-bred golden lions into reserves in Brazil. Unfortunately the black lion tamarin is much more sensitive and does not do nearly as well in captivity. Shortly after I took these photos in the Zona Brazil complex at Bristol, they moved the animals to an island exhibit and they were not on display at all on my most recent visits (I hope they are still alive). Chester used to have their pair on display (although most of their outdoor enclosure was shielded from view), but they built off-show enclosures near the animal hospital to provide secluded accommodation for this species and the equally endangered and difficult pied tamarin.

A last word on copyright.

If you value your copyright, be careful. Many years ago when I was teaching, my employers drew up new contracts which stated that they owned the copyright of all material created by each teacher. I doubt whether that clause would have been enforceable for material which was not related to teaching duties, even if the Pricncipal had wanted to do so, but nevertheless I insisted that my contract should specifically except any material which I had created for purposes not linked to my duties at the college.

For many years I posted my photos on my favourite discussion board, ZooChat (http://www.zoochat.com/) which acknowledged the photographers copyright. However I noticed a couple of months ago that this had been removed from the detailed captions of the photos, so I looked at the board's Terms of Use and noted that they had been changed to state that 

By posting any content to this site you irrevocably licence xxxxxx Group to reproduce, edit or distribute that content in any form in any location worldwide, and you waive any moral rights you have in that content. This licence is non-exclusive so you can continue to use your own material in any way including allowing others to use it.

 In consequence, although I still post some small images on the site, I no longer post my best images there - they come here instead  :)