I’ve been asked to submit my panel of Animal Portraits as one of six panels to represent Dublin Camera Club, and it is an honour to do so. Preparing the panel, and writing up a short introduction to it, prompted me to look back over some of the shots that I considered for it, but ultimately disregarded.
This shot was taken in a wildlife park Tasmania and is, obviously, a shot of a Koala bear. He was beaten to a place in the final panel of six by a yet-to-be-blogged image of a Kookaburra, photographed in the same park, because where the Koala failed to make eye contact with the camera, the Kookaburra succeeded.
This guy deserves his moment in the spotlight on the blog though, so I’ve chosen to post his image first. The Kookaburra will follow in the next few weeks, and I’ll post the full panel as it appears then too.
As you can make out in this shot, it was raining when I captured it, and I gather from the way the rain is falling that he has turned his head to shelter his face. I gave up waiting on him to face me as there were other creatures to be seen (Tasmanian devil, anyone?). I cropped the final image so as to use the branch as a framing element along the bottom and the right.
Despite the lack of eye contact, I like the shot, and it’s a good example of how a large optical zoom on a compact camera can help you get good images. This was taken with a Fuji Finepix camera, which had a 10x optical zoom. Given that I was using the camera in automatic mode, the fact that the background is nicely thrown out of focus is a bonus.
That’s a stunning photo. I like the way the direction of the rain drops give credence to his face not facing the camera.