Baby Elephant at Dublin Zoo

Never work with children and animals, so they say.  Though I’ve found both can be cooperative when you want them to pose for a photograph.   Even so, a baby elephant (being both young and an animal) should be difficult to photograph according to this theory, and I imagine I’d struggle to get one into the studio, but if you photograph it doing its own thing in its own environment, it’s not that difficult.  Especially when its own environment is a zoo.

There are many who have ethical objections to zoos and their practice of keeping animals in captivity, and equally many who will justify their existance as important for the conservation of wildlife.  Whatever side of the fence (groan) you are on in relation to that particular argument, I think most who have seen it would agree that the Kaziranga Forest Trail, which is home to the elephants at Dublin zoo, manages to achieve a fine balance between giving the animals a natural habitat in which to live while ensuring that the visiting public has something to look at, and all in the confines of a city-based zoo.  Perhaps it is because of this that the zoo has in recent years had success in breeding two baby elephants.

I’m pretty sure this photograph is of Asha, the older of the two recent additions to the elephant family.  Taking the photograph was just a matter of waiting for her to come towards the camera and timing my exposure so as to catch some sense of movement with two of her feet in the air.  While the weather wasn’t particularly pleasant that day the light was nice for photography and allowed me to get an image which shows the texture in her skin, with no deep dark shadows and not too much of the contrast that a sunny day would bring.

I processed the image in a way to make it almost monochrome – warming it up to enhance the browns of the sand, the rocks and the elephant herself.   The image is helped by the fact that I was able to take it from an elevated position (due to the layout of the walkway around the enclosure), and so the sand on which she is walking makes up almost the entire background.  This light coloured background allows her to stand out as a subject, and the elevated position also means it is not immediately obvious that she is in captivity.  Though I doubt you would get as close to a young elephant in the wild!