occasionalclimber

Caged spirit

A Snow Leopard, Melbourne Zoo. Wonderful to be able to see such a magnificent animal up close, but so sad to take away his Himalayan freedom...
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A Snow Leopard, Melbourne Zoo. Wonderful to be able to see such a magnificent animal up close, but so sad to take away his Himalayan freedom
Read less

NIKON D7000

settings

Aperture 56/10 ISO 1000 Shutter 1/60 Focal Length 300/1

upload_date

Aug, 2016

Views

3444

Likes

+492

Awards

Staff Favorite

Peer Award

+240

Absolute Masterpiece

+39

Top Choice

+28

Superb Composition

+22

Magnificent Capture

+13

Outstanding Creativity

Superior Skill

All Star

Genius

Virtuoso

Emotions

Impressed

Happy

Relaxed

Top Ranks

Top 10 rank

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Top 30 rank

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Behind The Lens

Location

At Melbourne Zoo, Australia.

Time

Late morning.

Lighting

The day was overcast, so the light was dim but soft - good in terms of less pronounced shadowing, but difficult in terms of freezing the subject’s movement.

Equipment

A Nikon D7000 and a 55-300 lens. For this shot the zoom setting was 300mm, ISO 1000, F5.6 and shutter 1/60 sec.

Inspiration

As a climber and quite frequent visitor to the Himalaya I am mightily impressed by snow leopards. I’ve never seen one in the wild – they’re masters of stealth and of their near vertical habitats. While it saddened me to see this magnificent animal deprived of his mountain home, seeing his pent up power so close was still a thrill. To get this candid, straight into the lens shot was more than I could’ve hoped for. I fancied the notion that he could sense our shared connection with the mountains, but then again, maybe he was just thinking “dinner”. I was glad of the heavy wired fence separating us.

Editing

The usual refinements in Camera RAW to balance highlights and shadow, but I also had to remove heavily blurred wire in the foreground cutting across part of his face using cloning and cropping. I also worked with saturation and contrast to accentuate his ice-blue eyes.

In my camera bag

I love the mountains, so as little as possible - at present a Nikon D750 camera body, a Nikkor 24-120 small zoom and the 55-300 bigger zoom, a spare battery and beaten up lightweight tripod - good for hiking. If I'm going for a summit then it's even less - a compact Nikon P7800 with mirrorless through the lens digital view finder, full manual operation and RAW file capture - absolutely great when you still want to control your photography but need to keep moving and can't afford to have stuff hanging off you.

Feedback

Go to interesting places and don’t forget your camera. Since joining ViewBug I’ve widened my sphere of interest beyond mountains and back country. Zoos aren’t my ideal scenario given that animals are caged up, but they do give great opportunities to get up close to amazing photographic subjects.

See more amazing photos, follow occasionalclimber

occasionalclimber

occasionalclimber

Caged spirit