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Zooooo!
Toby proposed we head to the zoo for a bit, as I'd expressed a wish earlier in the week to go there at some point and take photos. I jumped at the idea, as I was stresse3d out about the Seekrit Projekt and waiting for Mom to finish proofreading it. (You'll know about it when I can mention it in public.)
It was crowded* and warm, which is to be expected, and we spent about 2 hours there before I got headachy, cranky, and stomach-crampy (either dehydration, even though I had a bottle of water and was drinking it, or the not-very-good tacos I ate there for lunch). Went home at that point, but I did get some good photos with my new 70-300mm lens. Woo!
The lens did an awesome job of focusing on the tree, not the antelope. I'm going to have to practice until I can override the autofocus easily. :)
Not an especially exciting animal, but what's interesting is I'm shooting through mesh right now. It's close enough to the camera and the cockatiel is far enough away that it's so out of focus it vanishes. Other photos of the cockatiels gave an almost spotty bokeh effect, but this one had the mesh vanish entirely.
A lion doing what a lion does best. As Mom said when we were in the Serengeti: lions are very good at sleeping. They ought to be, as they get so much practice at it.
Synchronized preening! (Some sort of stork. I missed the signage that identified them.)
Another instance of the lens' capacity to blur out foreground object: there's a sturdy fence with uprights very close together between the humans and the tigers. I was shooting through it, and the uprights were so out of focus that they were faint blurs that just reduced the saturation of the area they were blocking. A bit of Photoshop magic, and voilá!
This was the photo that I thought was going to be the Picture of the Day before I downloaded them. Same deal as the white tiger above - shooting through the fence.
And THIS is the photo that turned out to be the Picture of the Day! An Andean condor sunning itself, wings outstretched.
* Although I have been to the zoo during Spring Break on Half-Price Wednesday, so I no longer fear hell.
It was crowded* and warm, which is to be expected, and we spent about 2 hours there before I got headachy, cranky, and stomach-crampy (either dehydration, even though I had a bottle of water and was drinking it, or the not-very-good tacos I ate there for lunch). Went home at that point, but I did get some good photos with my new 70-300mm lens. Woo!
The lens did an awesome job of focusing on the tree, not the antelope. I'm going to have to practice until I can override the autofocus easily. :)
Not an especially exciting animal, but what's interesting is I'm shooting through mesh right now. It's close enough to the camera and the cockatiel is far enough away that it's so out of focus it vanishes. Other photos of the cockatiels gave an almost spotty bokeh effect, but this one had the mesh vanish entirely.
A lion doing what a lion does best. As Mom said when we were in the Serengeti: lions are very good at sleeping. They ought to be, as they get so much practice at it.
Synchronized preening! (Some sort of stork. I missed the signage that identified them.)
Another instance of the lens' capacity to blur out foreground object: there's a sturdy fence with uprights very close together between the humans and the tigers. I was shooting through it, and the uprights were so out of focus that they were faint blurs that just reduced the saturation of the area they were blocking. A bit of Photoshop magic, and voilá!
This was the photo that I thought was going to be the Picture of the Day before I downloaded them. Same deal as the white tiger above - shooting through the fence.
And THIS is the photo that turned out to be the Picture of the Day! An Andean condor sunning itself, wings outstretched.
* Although I have been to the zoo during Spring Break on Half-Price Wednesday, so I no longer fear hell.
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I've just returned from *my* local zoo. I'd been dithering anyway, and your post pushed me over the edge.
As for the autofocus, sometimes a different mode (spot instead of spread) will do the trick; otherwise I'll switch off AF, do a rough approximate approach, and switch it back on again; that usually does the trick.
Your template seems to have eaten the 'reply' link; I could force it with ?mode=reply, but I can't find it.
Let sleeping lions and tigers lie
Housecats are bad enough.
BTW, Gatz says the antelope's eyeliner is ALMOST as pretty as his.
Re: Let sleeping lions and tigers lie
shoo them off
::is amazed::
Mine would steal all my jewelry and pee in my shoes if I disturbed them!
Re: shoo them off
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And, aww. That picture of the cockatiel is really making me miss my little booger, even though he died over ten years ago. They're such friendly, funny little creatures. I think I'll have to get another one day.
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*needs a new camera. also needs to download the pics she's got on her current one.*
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