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!