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BIG cats behind the scenes
tomorrow, you could buy the Sunday times magazine
but for now and on a lighter note than yesterday, here's some 'behind-the' scenes (mostly by Maria Monfort plana) of me at work at the big cat sanctuary photographing BIG cats with briony smith, keeper of heads, i mean: head keeper and friend to the animals
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welcome to the BIG cat Sanctuary
all cats like to play with toys
these used cat toys welcome you at the sanctuary and help you realise how powerful Big cats are
that's sheet metal on the right that's been torn through and chewed on
in fairness with have similar metal cans that mr.bunny likes to munch (uninvited guests be aware)
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my friend (and everyone else's friend too it seems) belinda, who is involved with the big cat sanctuary, asked me last year if i'd like to photograph some of the cats at the big cat sanctuary
and as i like to be busy, i said 'sure'
most people photograph wild cats from a distance, on long lenses, in daylight
for good reason, it turns out
so i decided to set up a photo studio INside a lion's den (literally not metaphorically) and photograph the cats in the same way that i would photograph a rock star, fashion model or actor.
i wanted to show what characters these cats are and how incredibly beautiful and magnificent.
as good as the end results are, it would be SO terrible to be just left with some nice pictures of these animals
many of the big cats at the sanctuary are endangered in the wild
i hope that through this work, we will raise some awareness of the real-world (outside of captivity) plight these animals face.
i initially offered to photograph ALL the cats at BCS not realising how challenging the project would be
the first 6 months, i went the BCS almost every week and every week i would come home without ANY pictures
i was HUGELY demoralised and thought, 'actually, this is never going to happen'
but with some patience (not one of my virtues) and support from the BCS and with time, the tigers who i photographed first, stopped hating on me and started trusting that i was 'ok' (especially as i usually arrived with small cubes of raw horse)
here's me with manzi the african lion, with his back turned to me: completely ignoring me and me wondering what i'm doing there
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my studio
this was the prototype
4 x brilliant Broncolor silos flash-heads in a surround sound with a beauty dish key: a light in each of the empty dens either side of the den we were shooting in.
these were left up for a month before i started working at all: although tigers are super-powerful they are also scaredy-cats and will NOT tolerate change to their environment without extreme suspicion
this DOES look like a prison cell but the cats have large outside runs and choose to come into the dens here, at night and sleep in straw-lined, wooden boxes.
we have painted the back wall grey here for a plain studio-like background
first i tried shooting on a hasselblad on a tripod, operated from a computer, a foot or two back from the mesh-weld fence
and photographing cats at floor level
but it turned out i had to hand-hold the camera right against the fence so i could move with my feline subjects
and we moved on to photographing the cats after they had jumped up onto the top of their boxes
sometimes, they'd jump down...
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here's NIAS on his box, waiting for his closeup
he had an open door back out to his outside space so he could always leave when he wanted to
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everyone's a photographer
briony showing me how to do it and wondering why i go to all the trouble when you can just do it on an iPhone
all the keepers take pictures of the cats in their care and get some great spontaneous, intimate pictures of them
here's a few to check out on IG
@briony_smith_
@feddie.allison
and
@bigcatricky
all helped on this project
NIAS wouldn't pose like this for me, for MONTHS and months
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NIAS again expressing how much love he has for me
it was hard not to take it personally...because it WAS personal
there's just something about me...
but
at least you know where you are with a big cat: they don't say one thing when they mean another: they let you know how they feel about you
briony thinks its funny that tigers aren't naturally drawn to my charming and charismatic ways
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the keepers can feed the cats horse by hand (through the mesh of the fence that separates cats from people)
i required a pair of tongs but it took months to even get to this point
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once there was trust, i could introduce a camera and introduce some flashes
there were still a couple of times when i my lens was squashed against the fence and there was a BIG cat squashed against the other side ROARING so loudly that steam was coming out its mouth with me actually petrified hoping the fence was secure
NIAS particularly just wanted to let me know who was in charge
i was in NO doubt
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with the cheetahs, we were in the same room and not separated by a fence
because cheetahs are less likely to savage you
but i still needed a keeper either side of me to make me a bigger potential target for savaging
i'm allergic to domestic cats (even though we have one) but i hadn't realised that bigger cats would be a bigger allergy issue
not being able to breathe and sneezing constantly was a minor problem eased with piriton and a Ventolin inhaler.
i'd seen big cats on safari in Africa before but i'd never been so close
i'm so in awe now
they just make you go, 'WOW'
and i HATE leopard print on ladies always but seeing an actual leopard fur on a living animal is mesmerising
so beautiful
we've got a lot to save in the world (including ourselves)
but we gotta save the cats too
BIG LOVE to all at the big cat sanctuary who do brilliant work
hope you can come see the exhibition at the stainer street tunnel at London Bridge starting next week and / or bid for some prints in the auction (details to follow)
AND we can continue to shout about what we can do to help animals that cant help themselves (despite being about to sort themselves out in a street fight or in a one on one fight without weapons)