Photos and the Reasons Why

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Taken on October 24, 2009
Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 400

This somewhat dreamlike shot was taken at the Khao Kheow (Green Mountain) Open Zoo. They feed the tigers meet on the inside of the pool you can see here, a pool which has a large glass wall so you can see inside. It’s great to watch, but the glass is always dirty, which usually makes photography difficult. It does, however, make for a nice soft focus effect when the tigers are some distance away and the krud on the glass is out of focus. In that instance, it acts like a soft focus filter and gives a nice dreamy look.

I like how calm and relaxed he looks, especially with the beautiful markings on his face. The damaged ear gives him a slightly war torn look. It’s nothing spectacular, just a good solid photo.

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Taken on November 21, 2009
Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 800

Location and musings:
This shot was taken at the Tiger Zoo in Sri Racha, the same place I took the tiger-through-the-hoop shot from last weekend. People putting their head in the crocodile mouth is a pretty famous circus trick, and suppose I’m not surprised they do it here. Before she puts her head in there, she spends a while banging a stick around inside the animal’s mouth. One theory is that she does that to remind the animal of the beating it will get if it closes it’s mouth. My theory is that it provides some sort of instinctual incentive to keep it’s mouth open. I’m unsure of how well a crocodile can be trained.

Also, she puts her head right up in the corner of the croc’s mouth, I’m sure part of the reason there is to keep the animal from getting much in the way of acceleration on the mouth.

Technical thoughts:
This photo was taken at the extreme limits of my old D40. At 200 mm, I was at the longest end of my longest lens. The photo has been further cropped, so that, with the additional APS-C crop factor, means this was probably effective 4-500 mm. I fired the flash, and it did have an effect, although not enough for the camera to register a return. The aperture is wide open. 1/125th of a second is the absolute minimum speed I could possibly imagine holding this shot steady. 800 ISO isn’t the highest setting the D40 has, but with the amount of noise that registers in the shot, I don’t think I could have feasibly bumped it up any more.

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Taken on August 11, 2009
Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 800
This photo was taken at the Sri Racha Open Zoo. Sri Racha is a city located about 30 minutes north of me and means “Grand King” or “Grand Royalty” in Thai. There is no “Sr” sound in Thai so it is often written as “Si Racha” even though the thai spelling, สรี, has all of the letters s, r, and i. There is a popular condiment in the U.S. called Sri Racha. It is spicy and shares a name with the city, but has no other connection to Thailand.

There is a cage in one of the back corners of the Zoo that had rather lax security. I probably shouldn’t have spent much time there, for my own safety. There was a metal gate, some electric fencing, and the tigers. They were probably two to three feet away from me. One of them roared, a truly intense sound that set me back on my heels.

The location allowed for some great close up shots though. Tigers are such huge, powerful animals that any little section of them ends up being a great photo. This series has a lot of closeup shots, lots of eyes, lots of glares and stares. I love this shot because I think it’s about as powerful as a photograph of a mammal can get without showing eyes.