While up at Fort Worth last week, I went to the zoo. I have not started editing the over 500 images that I kept AFTER the first cut of the captures that day. And if that wasn’t enough, my friend asked me to join him at the zoo Thursday, so I went to our San Antonio zoo too!
I never pass up an opportunity to go to the zoo! I can, (and do) spend hours at our zoo. Even though I have hundreds of images of many of the animals at our zoo, you just never know when you are going to be there for that special moment, that special capture that makes the trip worthwhile. Just one image that you can build the story for a composite; just one image that you can turn into something special for print competition… well.. it makes that day at the zoo something to remember.
Today was no different. I actually found out a couple things today!
We now have two hyenas!! While I didn’t capture them both out of the den at the same time, I did get a couple more nice images of one of them to add to my library.
A Day at the Zoo
And the bears were very playful today. One spent quite a bit of time inside the big tire. He finally did leave the tire while I was there and I did capture several images of him balance on top. Bears are very interesting to photograph. They have very, very small eyes for their size and when it’s sunny, they keep them closed. So getting captures with eyes open takes a load of images! I probably took 150 before I actually got a dozen close up faces with visible eyes. But, that’s wildlife photography!
A Day at the Zoo
We don’t have great apes or chimps are our zoo, but we do have some smaller monkeys. I’ve found a good place to capture them is from one of bird areas at the top of the zoo, near the hogs. The monkeys climb up to the top of their cages and you can get some pretty good angles on them. While they are still behind the fences, you are just at the right distance with a long lens, manually focused, to take the fence completely out of the image.
A Day at the Zoo
Even the komodo dragon was a bit active today. Not the one outside, but the one in the house. Fortunately this one decided to stop moving and hold very still for me. I was shooting with 1/30th of a second shutter, manually focused through the glass to get this capture. Of course, it was green because of the lights and glass, so had to fix the white balance. And I captured this with a pretty shallow DOF.
A Day at the Zoo
And then there was this new critter that I had no images of before. This is a yellow-backed duiker. I have duiker images in my collection, but thought most of them were much smaller antelope. I had no idea this one was at our zoo. Well.. actually, I sort of went behind a partition for staff only and grabbed a few images of it. So it was sort of “off exhibit” right now. But I could see it from the public area… I just wanted a better angle. The zoo staff behind the wall were fine with me grabbing a few captures!
A Day at the Zoo
Overall, a good day at the zoo. Not sure if any of these will become a composite element. Who knows… something might inspire me!
Galleries: The Pixel Mixer. Fine Art America.
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