Abstract Animals

Having gone on a trip to London Zoo with work colleagues recently it occurred to me that I go to quite a lot of zoos, farms, country houses and other such animal focussed places. Many of my colleagues hadn't been to a zoo since they were children whereas that was my third visit of the year - London Zoo twice and the excellent Whipsnade Zoo as well - and this is not unusual. My friends and I are rarely more happy than when in the presence of something furry and cute so we often go on trips planned around exactly that.



But I find zoos very frustrating from a photographic point of view, I nearly always come away disappointed. Very often there is some sort of cage or mesh that you have to try and shoot through or that gives you an unpleasant background; or thick, dirty glass which leaves your pictures looking flat, dark and grainy; and that's if you can even see the creature at all. On top of that there is the issue of whether the behaviour on display is natural or not; it's not often I've seen a large mammal get up to do anything other than pace the same strip of land, a sight that always leaves me feeling uncomfortable (a topic I shall look at in more detail in a future post). I don't think I have ever come away from a zoo with a photo that I felt did the majesty of the animal any justice.

With this in mind I decided that this year I would take a different approach. It was time to stop maligning the poor conditions and make the most of what was there. The new strategy, then, was to take extreme close ups of the animals, but not of their faces; just of their fur or scales or feathers; so close as to render some of them abstract. Certain animals it is almost impossible to disguise: giraffe, zebra, peacock. A child of five could pick those out. But how many people could spot the difference between a lion, a camel and a goat when you can only see a few square inches of their side? Sometimes I have to have a think myself, and I took the photos.

I think I'll keep this technique up for the time being. It feels good to look at familiar subjects with a fresh eye and a new angle and it certainly produces some interesting images.