A disinterested male gorilla turns his back to intrigued zoogoers as they stare and snap some photos behind their glass barrier. (Will Parson/Guardian)

The San Diego Zoo — tourist destination, bastion of
endangered species — is a locale I’ve returned to repeatedly when I get the
photographic itch. Even though I’ve navigated its network of pathways and
exhibits enough times to fix them in my memory, there is always something to
keep me coming back. Little things have the power to suddenly change a
disappointing trip into a memorable one. Seeing the kiwis, for example, made my
summertime zoo trip worthwhile.

With a camera in hand, the formula for a satisfying picture
has varied little from visit to visit. It involves a lot of walking, finding
animals that are awake and framing the photo so that there are no reflections
off the glass or blurry remnants of fence. Anything to suggest I didn’t venture
into the wild to shoot an elusive tigress meant I had failed as a photographer.
But after so many visits, even the catalog of endangered species has grown
stale. The problem is that photos of animals don’t tell my story. As a visual
document of my experience, my zoo photography was lacking.

Families fully equipped with strollers and snacks are as common a sight as the animals themselves in the children’s section of the San Diego Zoo. (Will Parson/Guardian)

It took about five visits for this predicament to become
unbearable, but it was a slow buildup. I had known all along that, as a biology
major, my experience at the zoo was different than that of the average tourist.
I know enough about certain species that seeing them in a zoo is anticlimactic;
seeing animals fenced in and forced out of their ecological context is often
disappointing. In some cases, however, I’ve stopped to appreciate a
less-popular animal, once I’ve learned of some of its history. I realized on a
more recent visit that I resented the majority of zoo-goers, who ignore the
more obscure species to head straight for the popular ones.

They’re called charismatic species. They’re cute, cuddly,
furry, colorful, big or otherwise identifiable and memorable to the common
citizen — at least to the extent that they stick in the public consciousness
long enough for an outcry to erupt should they warrant a conservation effort.
In that way, charisma can make the difference between saving a species and
losing it to extinction. Because of this I have developed an appreciation for
how other people perceive wildlife. So when I was finally tired of focusing my
camera on cute pandas and ponderous hippopotamuses, it was obvious what prey I
should switch to.

I went alone on my latest visit to the zoo in order to
efficiently hunt my new human subjects: the common visitor. They travel in
small groups, in most cases, with a stroller in tow, and are incredibly
abundant.

The inside of the zoo hadn’t changed much between visits — a
maze of sloping pathways and simulated habitat, designed to transport throngs
of stroller-pushing visitors to far-away lands and keep the specimens at ease.
But with my mind off the animals themselves, I was more open to my immediate
surroundings.

I took notice of what
people look for and what they miss. For example, in front of an exhibit full of
beautiful African fish, I watched a man blink a few times into the murky water
and mutter with a gloomy Southern twang, “There’s nothing in here.”

I wondered what he was looking for, and I got hints
throughout the day. At the gorillas, a female carrying its infant spurred a
woman to gush, “See the mom and the baby hugging?” At the reptile house, a
small boy gleefully announced, “There’s a daddy one!” The meerkats prompted a
mother to ask her daughter, “Do you remember them from the ‘Lion King’?” An
overweight woman frowned at the hippopotamuses and remarked, “God, what a big
ol’ butt.”

By the time a woman bluntly recognized an echidna as a
porcupine, I got the strong impression that if she had known it was an echidna
beforehand she would have been less excited. A thousand little comments like
this convinced me how a lot of an animal’s appeal comes from the visitor
drawing on their own lives, what’s in their memories and what’s important to
them.

I appreciated this rather than disdained it, because I was
treating the other visitors the same way they were treating the animals. As a
photographer, I don’t know much about the strangers I pass, but I can attach my
own story to them. If a photograph catches something that lets a viewer do the
same, it’s likely to be successful. It was certainly intriguing to think of how
the animals function in the same way for a lot of people, and how much they are
like works of art.