The Challenges of Manul Photography. Leningrad Zoo
Leningrad Zoo offers virtually every obstacle imaginable for the amateur manul photographer. Indeed,
- harsh light shining directly into the enclosure ✔️
- pale mesh, “burning” in the sunlight ✔️
- a barrier set at a distance from the mesh, preventing you from getting close enough to it for the mesh to be “separated” from the subject by depth of field (DOF) ✔️
- shallow enclosures, exacerbating the previous issue ✔️
- socialized manuls that come up to people. That is, up to the mesh. Which utterly destroys any hope of using depth of field artistically ✔️
After a day of despair, it seems as though something is starting to work out. Only later do you realize that the key word is “seems.” Any attempt to “subtract” the mesh results in multicolored streaks of the most psychedelic kind.
And then you look at a successful photo of Shu.
At kitten Pepe and Shu.
At kittens Pepe and Shu.
And at the Wisest One. The Wisest of the Wisest.
And you realize that things are not so bad after all. More than that—they are good. Our little fluffballs are with us. The Wisest One is drinking water. Which means the Earth has still not crashed into the celestial axis, and life goes on. Technical quality is not everything. Though it should, of course, be improved reiteratively and permanently.
We are lucky to live on the same planet as manuls. Which means today is a good day.
Comments 2
And the photographs are wonderful!
I spent all yesterday trying to get my camera* to focus on Kasper and Reza and not the cage mesh so I feel your pain, but in the end your photos are amazing as always! I love Shu peaking out of his hammock. 😍
(*My failure of course is not owning an actual camera and so being stuck using my phone's camera. 😱)