Over on the instagram, I shared a picture from my trip to the Riverside Discovery Center in Scottsbluff of their Amur Tiger. It was a beautiful shot that made me utterly lament that I still hadn’t gotten one quite as good of my tigers at home at the Denver Zoo. Well last weekend, I took a snow-day trip and Yuri delivered his end of the photo bargain. The Nikon z6 and the 400/2.8 did their jobs, and I did mine. The three of us together? Knocked it out of the park.
Visiting The Edge exhibit where Yuri lives on a snow day is quite an experience if he or Nikita are up and about. Usually the snow keeps the crowds away. The other thing it keeps away is ambient noise; snow absorbs a ton of it. So when Yuri is four feet from you, you get to hear the crunch of his paws on the snow. You get to hear his breathing. You get to experience his presence in a completely different way than normal. Short of being eaten by one, you’re unlikely to ever feel closer to a tiger than that.
The Zootographer 