Photographers Blog

Behind the scenes: Zoo surgery

By Phil Noble

One of the best things about this job is the ability it gives you to photograph things you would never normally get to see in most walks of life. Whether that is pitch-side access to top sporting events, behind the scenes glimpses at royalty and presidents or getting close to wild animals, the opportunities are as varied as they are fascinating. Photographing a young Cheetah cub having a broken ankle repaired definitely falls into those categories.

Me and another news agency colleague had sat down with Chester Zoo’s marketing team a few years ago and discussed the possibility of doing different pictures at the zoo apart from the normal cute baby elephants and giraffes that regularly appear.

We had worked slowly with them to gain the trust of the keepers and zoo management by shooting a variety of behind the scenes jobs like the recent health checks on the tiger cubs.

I was really keen to photograph as many different things as possible at the zoo to give myself and therefore our clients an insight into what goes on. As with most things in life it’s the things that we seldom get to see that are often the most interesting.

In this together: A recipe for survival

Stel Varias

Feb 28, 2011 12:12 EST

In the weeks after the mass shooting in Arizona in early January, the question in newsrooms and kitchens alike was: How long would it take Gabrielle Giffords to recover and could she ever hope to return to work in the U.S. Congress?

Never mind that she had survived a gunshot to her head at point blank range, we still wanted to know: How long? Six to nine months? Eight to 10 weeks? Years?

These were the same questions asked during my own medical crisis some 20 years earlier. I remember waking up in an emergency room and hearing talk of seizures (seven) and a brain tumor. Subsequent MRI & CT scans would confirm a tennis ball-sized mass.

The how long questions and answers I heard in the days that followed were hard to swallow. Among them one stands out: Six months to a year and a half was the answer. The question was not about recovery time but how long I could expect to live. The consensus by several doctors was the tumor was malignant.

People involved in traumatic events like that day in Tucson often speak of how things unfold in slow motion. That day in the hospital was no different for me. As a neurologist broke the news, it became very quiet. Even as he continued to speak, quiet. I didn’t cry, I didn’t say a word.

I was 30 years old. It was August 1990.