Featured Image: Badger Bonanza

Secret World, Somerset, April 2014

Secret World is a wildlife rescue charity based in East Huntspill in Somerset. They're generally closed to the public, but hold fundraisers a few times a year, on the bank holidays. When we lived in the area, we would attend most of these open days, generally spending half a day there. As it was close by and our son liked the animals, it provided a fairly gentle, low-key outing. I think that this occasion must have been the Easter weekend in 2014.

As it was springtime they decided to promote the event as a "Badger Bonanza", hence the title of image, which shows a badger cub that had been brought out to meet the crowd of visitors by a volunteer. The animal was obviously disoriented - they're nocturnal, after all - and frightened. 

This is the only time that I've seen an obvious conflict between Secret World's mission and their fundraising and outreach. To be fair, they were campaigning against the badger cull at the time, so that was probably driving the decision to hold this type of event. I don't believe that they did it again in that form.

This is about as "documentary" as my photography gets. I don't often have the opportunity to include people in my images, so I was pleased with this one and some years on, I still think that it works. 

The juxtaposition of the dark badger and volunteer against the brightly lit crowd is effective, in my view. The depth of field is about right - the crowd is recognisable as such but blurred, which focuses attention on the badger and keeper in the right hand half of the image.

The composition could have been improved, but I didn't have much time to frame it. The badger ended up in the centre of the frame which is probably appropriate, and the fact that the volunteer fills the right hand side of the image gives a sense of the way that she was trying to shield the animal from the noise and movement of the crowd.

If I was to rework it, I would lighten that right hand side to bring out more of the detail. That would blow out the other side of the image, so I might mask it, but that would flatten some of the contrast, and probably reduce the drama of the scene.