Passionate about technology, media and chocolate eclairs, I've worked in web and print for over twenty years and now run a digital media consultancy in Scotland.
Licking for lunch?
It was only a few weeks since I took the family on the annual visit to the Highland Wildlife Park when they announced free entry to celebrate St Andrew’s Day, but I was pretty keen on seeing the Amur tigers that have recently moved in, so we made the trip again. These are the beautiful beasts we’ve called Siberians for years, but which apparently don’t ive in Siberia at all, so now we must call them Amur tigers.
There are only around 400 of these big cats in the wild, so they’re pretty rare, and usually so bound up in anti-escape fencing that getting pictures is never easy.
The tigers at Blair Drummond are impossible to photograph due to the chain link fencing surrounding their enclosure, and you can’t close enough to it to throw it out of focus as you have to stay in your car.
But at Kincraig, not only can you see over the fence directly into the enclosure, there are big glass windows, which are clean enough to photograph through. In fact the windows doubled up as a lens support. The dull weather and shady position proved very dark for a long lens, and even at ISO1600, it was difficult to keep a 400mm lens steady, but rested against the frame of the window, I was able to get a sharpish headshot of the biggest cat in the world.
