On safari in Tokyo

Every so often I set myself a photographic challenge, as it helps me to maintain and improve skills; it can also be a lot of fun.

A couple of weeks ago I met up with a good friend and we headed out into Tokyo to shoot. Our destination? Ueno zoo.  The challenge that I had set myself was to shoot the animals to give the impression that they were in the wild, rather than in a zoo. This is not as simple as it might sound, as well as the challenges of composition and background, having to shoot through cages, glass and bars, the animals themselves are not very animated. Generally their cages are too small for them to move around much and the temperature in the daytime at the moment is about 35c, which makes even me want to lie down and go to sleep.

It took a few attempts to get what I wanted and I was only able to do it with a few of the animals. The glass panels that look into the compounds of some of the fiercer animals, e.g. lions, where so scratched that it was impossible to get a decent shot.

I’ll leave you to decide if I managed to achieve my goal or not. Feel free to comment in the box at the bottom.

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