David Alan Harvey said that "Don't shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like."
I've tried to do justice, the best that I could, to those remarkable words on my last visit to the Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens in Mysore.
Although it can never beat the experience of witnessing these beauties in their natural habitat, a visit to the zoo goes a long way in adding to a keen sense of dreamy imagination of what it might feel like to see them in the wild. Let's say, more like trying to put that experience on a fast forward mode!
All you need to do is just keep moving and admiring like a child (although the legs refuse to move when you see one of it's kind for the first time!) and gawk once in awhile with big wide eyes while trying to shoot through the bars. In most cases, I'd say just pray that the bars become invisible for that 1/8th fraction of a second or figure out how to work your way through various modes while inadvertently praying you somehow get the settings right!!
Well apart from waging war with my camera, not wanting to look like a freak photographer to bystanders and casting back guilty looks at my folks who literally gave up (or rather their feet gave up..) on trying to figure out why I had to spend close to 10 minutes in front of every clearing, staring at the same spot or shooting in the same angle - I have tried to make it look as natural as I could, although in some cases the steel bars in the background are unavoidable...
So here's to my tryst with the captive world.....
Her highness...
