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This Is The Best Animal Photo I Have Ever Taken

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Longtime readers of this blog know that I like to take photos, and I primarily take them of two types of subjects: nighttime cityscapes, and animals. When you're shooting architecture, you can take your time, you can plan. You can set up your tripod and be reasonably certain what your photo will look like when it is done exposing. Photographing architecture is a matter of vision and skill. When you're shooting wild animals in semi-naturalistic environments, all the planning in the world won't matter, short of things like choosing to shoot during the time of day animals are most likely to be active, and so on. Photographing animals is much more a matter of luck, patience, and a fast shutter. Some background knowledge of the behavior of the species you're shooting is probably useful as well. But really, there's a lot of serendipity involved.

With that, I present The Best Animal Photo I Have Ever Taken - a female bonobo photographed on March 3, 2013, at the San Diego Zoo.

Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication.

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