Tasmanian Devil

So the title of this post kind of spoils the surprise, but I bet you wouldn’t have known what animal this was if I didn’t tell you.  But as the title gives away, it is indeed a Tasmanian Devil, and was photographed, surprise surprise, in Tasmania.

I actually photographed this little critter (well, he is Australian!) on the same day that the beautiful Koala bear was sheltering his face from the rain, and at the same wildlife park.    He doesn’t look as cute but he and the Koala have something in common – they’re both vicious.

So much so in this guy’s case that the keeper who was showing him to us was careful how he handled him, and pretty clear on the need to keep your hands back.

I’ve classified this shot as a portrait, having initally thought about categorizing it as a wildlife shot.  Sure the thing that will catch your eye is our vicious friend, but the way I framed the shot, it is as much a portrait of the keeper as it is of the animal.

It is shot in natural light, back when I was letting the camera do the work and long before I cared about such things as natural versus artificial light, or soft versus hard light.   I can’t recall the details of the shot, but I can reverse engineer it to figure out some things about the lighting.

Looking at it now I would guess that it was shot either on the south side of that shed you see in the background, which (remembering that this was taken in the southern hemisphere) would have put the keeper in open shade, or it was shot under a cloudy sky.  Or possibly both.  How do I tell that?  By looking at the shadows, particularly on the keepers face.  You can see that they transition slowly and have soft edges, so there’s no hard light – that means no direct sun light.  Also, I can surmise the the photo was taken in the early afternoon by the fact that a narrow aperture, a low ISO and a relatively fast shutter speed were used, meaning there was plenty of light.

Trying to reverse engineer shots in this way is a good exercise to learn and think more about lighting.  You may not always be right, but it gets you thinking, and that gets you understanding.

My only disappointment with this photograph of the Tasmanian Devil is that he didn’t look like the guy on the right!