Photographer Tim Flach is a renowned for his animal portraiture. An expert in capturing dogs, he searches for the human qualities in all his images. In 2012, he set out to photograph one of nature's most loved animals: the giant panda. The result? An expression that is as confusing as it is endearing.
On the look out for the perfect panda participant, Flach came across Ya Yun, a mischievous female from Chengdu, China. Under the care of the Panda Research Centre, Flach only had a short amount of time to capture the perfect pose. Preparation was key. "There were lots of meetings and agreements before I could get access to her," says Flach. "I would only have a few minutes to photograph Ya Yun. Like for any star, it was no different for the ambassadorial panda."
Flach spent time practising the shot with a toy panda before Ya Yun entered the room. Once inside the studio Ya Yun took an instant dislike to her new surroundings. "She pulled down my perfectly positioned black backdrop. She tore it cleanly in two, enjoying every moment," Flach says. "It was a beautiful piece of crushed velvet that we bought all the way from the UK. I had to piece it back together and make do".
Hungry Ya Yun had to be tamed by food. "Usually, they would have a stick of bamboo but we gave her small fragments of apple that wouldn’t be as obvious in the shot," says Flach. "I sought to focusing on Ya Yun's personality as an individual, needing to move the portrait away from a normal bamboo eating panda. What I got was something very gestural and ambiguous, you can easily imagine her holding a microphone or ice cream".
"She was very impressed with herself," Flach says.
Tim Flach's new book,Endangered, is out now
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
