A real king in a fake world
Jan, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo is taken at one of my favorite places to be and practice my hobby... Planckendael, one of the multiple zoo's in Belgium. I just love to spend an entire day observing the animals and wait for that one perfect moment! That one moment where you can see the greatness of the species in the photo, that one moment where you don't think about them being kept in cages, but you think about them being who they really are: wild animals who make the world a little better.Time
If i'm not mistaking this photo was taken in the afternoon around 3 o'clock. I still remember that I spend ages in the morning at the cage of the lions but couldn't get an interesting composition. After a while I decided to keep moving on and photographing the other animals, but at that certain time of the day I walked by the lion cage again and somehow knew that I should keep my camera close to me. The lighting was great, the moment was there and up 'till now it remains one of my favorite images!Lighting
This is what I love to do, creating a certain atmosphere with just natural lighting involved. Ofcourse I was very lucky with the lighting that day and the placement of the animal itself (as you can't tell a lion go stand over there haha!), but I always try to see from which angle the lighting will be best and then with wild animals you can't do anything but wait and hope...Equipment
I used a canon EOS 60D, my best buddy, with a kit zoomlens (55-250mm). Here 250mm was used, f 5.6, 1/500 sec, iso 320. No tripod, no flash, just me and my camera!Inspiration
I titled this photo 'A real king in a fake world' as a reference to the lion, which is such a great and majectic being, captured in a cage, which people try to make it look real (as seen in my photo with the fake bamboo painted on the walls etc) even though it isn't. As soon as I saw this lion standing there against that wall, I saw a statement, a statement to think about and that's what inspired me. Ofcourse it's important that the endangered animals are kept alive and are bred so that they don't become exstinct, but it such a pity that many zoo's don't make their cages just that little bit more natural.Editing
I didn't do much post-processing in this photo. Just brightened the colors a bit, add some contrast and a vignet and cropped the image a little bit.In my camera bag
I only have one body, so ofcourse the first thing to pack is my canon 60D. When I was doing my photography training 2 years ago, I learned about non-zoom lenses and so it began. My new favorite lense has risen since then! The plastic fantastic 50mm 1.8. Whenever I could use it one way or another (and yes, it doesn't matter what I have to do or where I need to stand/crawl/lie down haha), I will. I also have my 2 kitlenses with me, a 18-55mm and a 55-250mm. My reflector and tripod are always in my car in case I would need them. I also have an ND filter (you never know it could come in handy) and polarisation filter (but that's mainly for photographing my father's koi for him haha).Feedback
The best advice I can give is that you must be patient. Especially with animals and even more with wild animals. You can't tell a lion, tiger, hippo, elephant or even your own cat to sit/play/run/stand over there... But you have to be willing to wait, if you're lucky you don't have to wait long but if you want that one perfect shot... It's perfectly possible you have to wait an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours or more. When you're photographing animals in captivity, I always try to capture an animal in the most natural way possible, without the disturbing surroundings of buildings etc. You have to look around, move around yourself to see from which angle you can achieve such thing... Oh, and always remember, there are no pictures taken without a little luck! :)
