[matthew]

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I had a hard time finding a title for this series. It's the end result of what Uli (if my memory serves me correctly) called my "Behind Bars" photos, a name that I really like and used as a working title when I was thinking about what I wanted to show. But in the end I decided that it was too definitive, and didn't leave enough room for the viewer to have their own opinion or enough ambiguity about what my own view would be. So I selected, edited, and set the page layouts for my favourite six photos, chose the sequence, and selected the cover image and the portfolio to put the prints in. I had done all the research, played with different ideas for the captions, and selected the font. (Helvetica, which is what the Zoo uses.) The title was the last part of the puzzle, and I was stumped.

Then I saw the slogan for the Toronto Zoo:

"Same Planet. Different World."

Perfect.

This is a series that I shot intending for it to be printed, making the format of the page and style of the caption into important compositional elements. I wanted a lot of white space and a very clean font to give the idea that the captivity of the animals is so powerful that the images themselves are captive in the page. (The photos are formatted at 8"x10.5" so that there will be an additional quarter-inch white space on each side of the finished print.) All of the sorting and initial processing was done in Lightroom, with selective sharpening and layout done in Photoshop. I may eventually add more animals, as the series still feels a little sparse to me, but that will have to wait until the end of the summer when I might be willing to brave another trip to the zoo.

If anyone's interested in seeing these in a larger size, my Smugmug gallery of this series is here.

I hope you enjoyed the series, and as always comments or critiques are welcome.

[wulinka]

Hey Matthew, I remember you initial post on these. You've come a long way!
I think they are great, you are perfectly pointing out the "two worlds".

Only the elephant is not exactly my favorite, I don't like how the wire cut's off his foot, poor thing.

Excellent stuff otherwise!

Uli

[Keith Alan]

Other than suggesting that the lions move to the end so as to bookend the message, I have nothing to offer but praise and astonishment.


As photographers we spend so much time and effort making the hated windows and fences of the zoo disappear...trying to fool ourselves and our audience into thinking that these animals are "in the wild" or at least the next best thing.
Pretending that we're nature photographers...

But they're not in the wild, and I don't think I'll ever forget that or pretend otherwise after seeing this series.


I look forward to a few more, if only for the snakes, fish and birds?

[matthew]

Uli, thanks, the feedback that I got from my first efforts really helped me with this series. They are a lot better, if I do say so myself, and a lot of that is because I was able to see what worked and had to clarify what I wanted the photos to be.

Keith, I'm glad that you're getting what I did. I've been to the zoo several times as an adult, but you're exactly right that it was always with the idea that I should be acting like a nature photographer. I'd take the ironic and cheeky children-watching-monkeys shot too, but I never had an opinion about it. Now I do.

The Toronto Zoo is actually a pretty good one, with a lot of care and attention to the animals, and what-seems-like reasonable amounts of space. But the reality is that this is an amusement for bright six-year-olds, a theme park, and a carnival freak show all rolled into one. I'm not saying that it should have a museum's sterility and objectivity, but putting concession stands inside little safari huts does not make it Africa. That's why I ultimately chose the animal's native range for the caption information to be paired with these artificial barriers: this is not their home and native land. (My smugmug gallery can display the caption that's included in the metadata, which was an earlier variation giving the exhibit that the animal can be found in.)

I did have some fish photos, but they're very hard to get because the tanks are usually too clean. There are a couple of birds in my collection, a kookaburra, bald eagle, and a great horned owl, but they're hard to make out in the background or otherwise weren't strong photos. And I never did visit any reptile displays. I probably will try to add to the collection later in the year, and perhaps I can find a few more from my last shoot.

[Keith Alan]

Our zoo is a really good one, too.
3 months after getting my camera I went there and got a bunch of photos I was proud of.
Showing them on the 'net got me the advice to "isolate the animals and take care with backgrounds so it doesn't LOOK like a zoo".
That stuck in my impressionable mind at the time and seemed to make sense--it's a technical and compositional challenge that everyone should probably master.

But what's the next step?
Having an opinion and finding an effective way to get it across to your viewers.
Breaking away from just another well-made animal photo and actually saying something like you've done here.

I think your captions/font size worked on a subliminal level with me last night--the message got through without being too aggressive. PETA would have made the 'native range' type in 36pt bold italic glowing neon.


I was happy with my last zoo pics--I let the zoo-ness show and concentrated on my love of seeing exotic animals wherever I can find them locally since a trip across the ocean is out of the question.
Now I think another zoo trip for me will have to wait until cooler weather, and hopefully I'll have a new approach by then.
You've set the bar rather high.


We also have a huge drive-through nature park where African animals are allowed to roam freely in our uncomfortably similar environment; of the type where giraffes looking for a treat can stick their noses inside your car, and herds of zebra run free while water buffalo block your progress.
For the usual "nature" shots I think it would be the better place to go, but now I'm thinking of ways to capture them that will be different and more meaningful.