Over the Summer I did my best to not be anti-social and spend some time with my family instead of disappearing to go and take photos, and maybe eat cake and have a cup of tea. Hmmm, cake…

So, as a father I have to take everyone into account. We’d done a few visits to zoos in the past but had never been to the Palmyre. Well, why the heck not. Ok it’s about 2 hours away, but we can do that without wanting to kill each other. I let Virginie do the driving. Always best.

Many people have various opinions on zoos, ranging from how can you put animals in prison, to how great they are because of breeding programs etc. For me it’s about letting my family, and especially my children get to see animals up close, in a way that they could only see otherwise by travelling vast distances, or see in photos or on TV.

Even when passing from enclosure to enclosure, we take the time to see each animal, to see what it is doing, to see how it interacts with the other animals around it. We see where the animal would live in the wild, what it might eat, and through that information and observation we can maybe understand more about each animal. We also get to form a kind of relationship with the animal too. Even more so when it is fury and cute. But we see how strong they can be. Just look at the muscles on the chimpanzee. Some of the animals can be fed pop corn, which is conveniently on sale at the entrance to the zoo, and at various outlets within… We build a connection, even if it is by proxy. You can ask your child, “Well, which was your favourite animal?” And more importantly, “Why….?” The child will think about everything it has seen, and how those TV images have become more tangible.

For those of you interested in the purely photographical, the photos were taken on the Canon 6D Mark II, with the 75-300mm F4/5.6 zoom. I had no idea how to take photos of animals in a zoo, so treated the thing as a portrait shoot with various models, and not just fury cute ones…