Highland Wildlife Park

This fine weekend finds me up north in Scotland, visiting the Highland Wildlife Park. The journey took about 8 hours from London to Kingussie direct, and for the return journey I took a sleeper train down overnight. Two days were spent up north, attending one of Chris Weston's wildlife photography workshops. The wildlife park itself is home to a myriad amount of critters, however we were very focused on a few subjects. Tigers, Otters, Macaques and Wolves were the main highlights, and we were allowed behind-the-scene access to photograph the critters.

Our first visit was to the Amur Tigers. There was an adult pair, with 3 cubs. Ordinarily one can photograph from several viewing platforms (with glass windows), however we were taken to the opposite side, and shoto these critters through a much better vantage point (i.e. at eye level). There was fencing of course, but the fencing there was of a dark color, and not an issue for photogrpahy so long as the lenses were properly centered.

Amur Tiger Cub (heavily cropped)

I had the idiotic idea to pop on the 1/4 CTO gel on my flash in order to intensify the fur color, it worked for some shots, not for others. I seriously need to leave it out of my kit else I keep reaching for it....

The above shot is of the female tiger, I think. The enclosure is HUGE, as you can gather from the photograph here. It is very easy to get a shot without any man made objects in sight. I may be wrong, but I only remembered two wooden structures for the tigers to play on, but apart from that it was sheer scottish woodland enclosed in dark wire. Perfect for photography.

I'd guestimate this is easily twice, maybe even 3 or 4 times the size of the dingo enclosure in Cleland. Massive.

The cubs were very curious and were constantly exploring the area, us, and playing with each other. The male was BIG. Probably the biggest cat I've seen. I think he came by the fence once, then settled for a siesta nearby.

Red pandas were next on the itinerary. Pretty tough to shoot with the trees in the way, but with the 300/4 + 1.4x, I managed a headshot and a few shots of the critters climbing up and down the trees.

We actually went to the wolves next, but the furballs were hiding and not wanting to play, so we decided to visit later, and visit the Japanese Macaques instead. There was a little one in the massive enclosure (which probably rivals the tigers') that was annoyed by my flash, so I shot un-assisted :)

Again, we were brought in much closer than the public could possibly visit, via a side walkway. Same dark colored fence that was easy to manage. Given the time we spent there, I had the chance to do a multitude of shots with the 70-200, 300/4 plus the teleconverter.

Close indeed. 300/4 + TC14EII, uncropped.

In an earlier blog post I had said I had issues shooting gorillas as they were too human like, didn't feel that way with these fellows. I wonder why?

At last, one of the critters I wanted to shoot badly... Arctic Foxes :) I could be mistaken but the furball above is called Houdini :) :) :) Maybe I should sponsor them hmmm...

Tight headshots, stuff I love :)

Lovely little critters.

There is also a huge safari style drive through surrounding the park. Thankfully one of my fellow workshop mates was very kind and took me around with him. On this particular trip I had brought both the D200 and D300; D300 was the mainstay of course, but the D200 was used with the 16-85 for environmental shots and grab shots like the one above.

Nuzzle fuzzle.

My favourite wolf shot of the day :)

~fin