Shooting a Tiger - Pug Mark Park

A few weeks ago I went up to McKinney, Texas on a photo tour of Pug Mark Park. These tours are organized about once every month by Tom Hicks. For $50 you get 2 hours of shooting with the cats - there were two tigers and one lion when I was there. The funds go to support feeding and care of the animals. The facility has a good setup for photographers as the fence has a fairly open lattice so you can actually put the end of your lens through the fence and avoid getting it in the shot (unlike your standard chain link fence which has smaller openings). However, you do have to be careful standing next to the fence, as the larger openings mean that the cats can swat you if you're not paying attention.

I highly recommend this event - it was well worth the price of admission. Here are a couple of my favorite photos along with the complete set on flickr. Taken with a Nikon D700 and 70-200mm VRII, TC-20e III, and 85mm f1.4.