A Day at the Zoo

Zoo photography. All photographs © Al Macphee/MiraclePR

Saturday 28th August 2021 – Zoo photography

Last weekend was a quiet, personal, birthday weekend. The family was down, the grandkids were over for the week and so we had a few days off. Someone had the bright idea of going to Paignton Zoo. I used to live at that zoo. I spent three years there, documenting every species of animal – in fact, every animal – for the identification/illustration boards and for the education department. If you adopted an animal, you got sent one of my pictures with your certificate as part of your adoption package. I was also involved with the press officer, sending releases out and keeping the zoo in the press.

I thought about things laterally: I thought, let’s go and see how things have changed, and get some zoo photography in at the same time. They say they’re a progressive zoo so let’s see what they’ve got.

Because we were visiting under the COVID regulations, keeper talks weren’t happening. Even though people were crammed together at the glass to see the lions and tigers, the zoo didn’t want to promote crowds. So, the information board at the front entrance which would normally tell you which keepers were doing talks and where wasn’t there. We didn’t know whether it was, what you would call a ‘starve day’ for the animals. In my day, we would train the animals to be active at a certain time of the day so you could more or less guarantee people could see them. If we didn’t, they would just sit at the back of the enclosure and be pretty boring for people. A tiger that’s asleep in the distance isn’t as exciting to a child as a tiger that is coming up to the glass and showing you his teeth.

So, we used to train them and that was feeding time: throwing meat into the right place, using feeding stations, etc. We would feed them through drawers in the fence. The animal would come up, pick the food up and hopefully sit down and eat it in front of everyone so people could at least see those guys.

A tiger that’s asleep in the distance isn’t as exciting to a child as a tiger that is coming up to the glass and showing you his teeth.

But on this occasion, we didn’t know whether it was a starve day or not so we had to take pot luck. We headed up to see the lions – or what we thought was going to be the lions – but they weren’t there. Then I remembered reading a story about them swapping the lions and tigers around. We did see two tigers, presumably waiting for their food because they were active and hovering around the food area.

Next, we went to see the lions and…nothing. So, there’s your starve day. There was no activity at all there. We went to see the new monkey house they had built and that was absolutely great because there is now loads of enrichment and space outside to explore. Ten or fifteen years ago, the monkey enclosures were absolutely atrocious so they’ve really improved that, more for the benefit of the animals than the visitors.

When we got to the ape house, due to COVID, lots of people were queuing to get in. Because people were gathered in a small space, they had tasked a steward to control and educate the public. She explained how stressed the gorillas get by the end of the day. Imagine people holding toddlers up to your window from ten in the morning to five at night, pointing and shouting, “Oooh, look!” The steward was explaining how the gorillas will get stressed and play havoc, throwing things and banging the glass.

Gorillas are also very protective over their guides. It’s like they’ve understood that they are one of them. A few weeks earlier, a member of the public was really having a go at one of the guides and Pertinax, the old silverback, decided he was going to pick up a log and throw it at the glass to protect her. I wonder if that human got the message.

Now, a certain little girl didn’t want to go into the tropical house because of the spiders and other scary animals. We reassured her that they were in cages and coaxed her in. She’s got her nanna’s phone and all of a sudden she’s racing towards this snake in its glass-fronted cage. It was all curled up in a perfect composition. She had already taken a picture and it had a bit of reflection in it so I showed her how to take the picture properly. I just had to take one myself and I’ve used it to illustrate how to take zoo photography through glass.

If you are interested in zoo photography, make sure you know your subject. Do your research. How are the animals going to behave? Which animals are likely to be active? Which are not going to be there because they’re having a check up with the vets. Again, it’s all about making things as easy as possible for yourself.

Have a burning photography question you would like Al to write about in his next blog post? Email info@miraclepr.com with your request.