Are lions (and tigers?) the only ones with open enclosures and hence acceptable photo opportunity? A French friend told me that the place has an astonishing collection of cats (which attracts me) but very bad photo opportunities (which disattracts me just as much)
Actually this photo was taken through a chain link fence. The lions and tigers do NOT have open viewing, with two minor exceptions. The white lions (one of three different lion types on display) have a raised platform at one end of their exhibit. The malayan tiger (one of four different tiger types on display) has a raised viewing tower. However, I have never actually seen the malayan tigers there (on three days of visits - one in 2009 and two in 2010) because their enclosure is the most densely forested of all.
One improvement in 2010 over my 2009 visit is they added more glass viewing windows for some of the small cats that were previously all fence. But the big cats are almost 100% through chain link. In spite of this, I am able to get great photos here and so are other photographer because there is a regular group with serious camera equipment that seem to show up every afternoon.
As you may know, with a telephoto lens and a large aperture you can blur out the fence as long as the animal is not too close to it. The beauty of Parc Felins is that the enclosures are so huge that the cats are usually far enough back to make blurring the fence easy. Of course if you only have a point and shoot camera, this will not work. (But you could still get great shots of some of the less commonly displayed small cats). But any SLR with a 300mm lens would work fine through the fences here. Just set it to the largest aperture and manual focus (so the lens focus doesnt lock on the fence).
The cat collection is unmatched - there is no place in the world where you could come anywhere close to seeing what you can see here. The fact that they are in very large natural enclosures makes it even better.
