Jumping Siberian Tiger, Tatiana

I took this shot yesterday (another beautiful SF day) when we decided to check out the San Francisco Zoo, which is a surprisingly good zoo. On most days it seems like the animals, particularly the big cats, spend a majority of their days hiding out, napping out of sight, not that I fault the animals for that. But yesterday the Siberian Tigers put on quite a good show.

 

There were two in this exhibit and they did a lot of 'playing', or whatever you'd call it. It was a lot of behavior you see in house cats, only these cats weight ~600lbs. They were in an out of the pool, jumping over the logs, and wrestling with each other. I managed to capture a few shots but this was my favorite, just as the female tiger was jumping out of the pool towards the other.

 

I normally think zoo shots are kind of dull (including my previous uploads) but thought this one was pretty cool.

 

Also, at the end of the day I was annoyed to find I'd accidentally left my camera on ISO 800 (or 'extra grainy' if you prefer). But in the end I think this would have come out blurry without it, and I'll take grain over blur any day. But still, there's a lesson in there - always check ALL your settings.

 

EDIT: I'm currently away for the holidays and I just heard about the horrible incident at the San Francisco Zoo. This is indeed Tatiana, the tiger who somehow escaped her enclosure and attacked some visitors and tragically killed one person. Tatiana was sadly killed as well in the incident.

 

Nikon D40 | Nikkor 18-200VR@200mm | f/8 | 1/2000s | ISO800 | Handheld

Done