Knowsley Safari Park
Knowsley Safari Park
Written by Thursday, 24 June 2010 00:00
"(I)f you take photos, don't speak, don't write, don't analyze yourself, and don't answer any questions." Robert Doisneau
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Knowsley Safari Park (Liverpool, UK) Τhe Park is a very popular destination; it is an excellent choice for a day out whethere with friends or with a young family. It is situated on the estate of Lord Derby. Visitors can drive through and admire a variety of animals roaming free as well as walk through protected areas and visit other animals in their enclosures. The park is home to an interesting collection of animals including lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, bongos, camels and baboons. Apparently "the Derby Estate have a tradition of keeping animals, ever since the famous artist and nonsense-poet Edward Lear was employed there in the 19th century to paint pictures of the Earl's collection". (1) The Park is also home to Stanley House establishment, where Lord Derby breeds high profile race horses. (2) We really enjoyed every minute of our visit to the Park. It expands over a considerable area so we only managed to see part of it (which in itself justifies subsequent visits). The animals were all in prime shape, with ample space to move and feel at home. It is imperative to stay in the car in most of the journey as the animals can be unpredictable. That proved to be a problem in two ways. Firstly it is difficult to move large lenses around in a car; the space is so limited that makes the use of exotic teles a problem, even more so for the driver who gets less chances for a nice shot. Secondly, one has to be very careful to avoid reflections of the car interior on the glasses. Due to such reflections we lost a number of otherwise quite interesting and, on occasions, unique shots. In some areas it is possible to shoot with the windows wound down but this cannot be done in the large cats area, for instance. Thankfully the management of the Park has thought about it so a van with staff is available in the area to drive around and prompt the lions to move in different directions for the visitors to admire. The ostriches can also be quite dangerous - during our visit the ferocious male ostrich which protected its egg-incubating female did not encourage proximity of any sort. Finally the baboons - now their area was a laugh! We decided we would drive through it which we would do again - though for those who do not wish to do so there is a bypass route around their area from where, if parked, visitors can see the animals but not come close to them. We still do not know who had more fun, us trying to take photos of them or them jumping all over the cars and trying to take a souvenir from every car that crossed their territory (with our car they were concentrating on the screen wipers and the aerial). Of course driving around also means that the weather is not an issue and that carrying a lot of heavy photogear is equally not an issue at all. We had our four cameras with us (Nikon D300, D700, D2x and D3x) and a bunch of lenses of which four were used for most shots (AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/2.8, AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II, AF Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8 D and AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G). The lens selection proved to be wise since it allowed us to shoot even when the animals came very close to the car, as in the case of the ostrich (which tried to reach the camera), the camel (which put half its head in the car) or the baboons (which seemed to be all over the car). As for the classic long distance shots, the telephoto lenses did a very nice job. It was quite a task to choose which pictures to present here. We chose a number which we feel give a good idea of our experience during our first visit, including some animals coming over to say hello to us very close to - or literally half inside - our car. Photos
by Marina
Parha and George
J. Reclos Shooting data: 1. Camera: Nikon D700 3. Camera: Nikon D700 4. Camera: Nikon D3x 5. Camera: Nikon D700 6. Camera: Nikon D3x 7. Camera: Nikon D700 8. Camera: Nikon D700 9. Camera: Nikon D700
(1) Wikipedia |
These photographs have been taken at Knowsley Safari Park. They are the property of MCH Portal and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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