Lens-Artists Challenge: Portraits

Posted on March 18, 2025

Like many others. I suspect, I’m not really comfortable with portrait photography. There’s no doubt that it’s an art form in itself – cf. Annie Leibovitz, for example, or Karsh of Ottawa – but I feel much more relaxed focusing (literally) on non-human subjects.

Nonetheless, I thought I’d give it a go for the Lens-Artists Challenge this week and started to comb through my image library. I was very happy – and surprised – to come across this image of a young chimpanzee. It had been misfiled (and therefore forgotten about), but my best guess is that it was taken at Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

As portraits go, I don’t think it’s a complete disaster. The subject is calm, reflective – a little curious, even. And, happily, looking straight at the camera.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Portraits

Category: Uncategorized Tagged: Chimpanzee, Eye contact, Lens-Artists, Portraits, Taronga Zoo

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Lens-Artists Challenge: Zoo

Posted on February 18, 2025

This week’s challenge is to choose ‘only one picture’. This is something I usually do anyway, thanks to a combination of parsimony and idleness.

Mostly, I just take photographs of things that strike me as interesting or aesthetically pleasing – like most photographers, I suspect.

However, if there is one image in my library that has stayed in my mind in the (many) years since I took it, it’s this image of a caged young chimpanzee in the Al Ain Zoo in the United Arab Emirates. There’s no suggestion that it was being ill-treated, but it looks pretty traumatised to me, and it does raise fundamental questions about the ethics of zoos.