Captive

I found an interesting article about the ethics of photographing captive animals at NatureScapes.net - “Can Photographing Wildlife Models make Conservation Sense”

The article is quite timely considering my decision to raise extra money for Gorilla Conservation, and is something all zoo and/or nature photographers have to consider.

An animal in a zoo is always going to give us twinges of guilt, the fleeting thought that this is not how it should be. Perhaps it’s also time to realise that our idealisation of the ‘wild’ is fraught with human hypocrisy. We demand all creatures be free, hum the tune of “Born Free” and tear up imagining Lions loping away in the African sunset - while slowly killing them and destroy their habitat beyond recognition anyway.

As the article points out, the image as ‘icon’ is vital for our longterm attitude towardes a species. How many of us are more concerned about primate conservation than the obscure nocturnal creature that is still referred to by its scientific name? Every image of a species shapes the weight of our concern for it. Captive or free, those images need to show the innate worth and individuality of those animals. In the long run, conservation only works when people care.