Sharpness:
One of the biggest problems I found was to get the images sharp. The animals move but also if they don’t it is hard to get the right part in focus (the eyes)

Fence:
A defining property of a zoo is that the inhabitant are in cages or enclosed by fences. This makes photographing a little tricky especially because often there is still a distance between the fence and the zoo visitor (a moot or something like that). I found however that you can take pictures through a fence without problems. Since the fence is so much out of focus it won’t show up on your picture as such (you do see a distortion in the boekeh) The picture below is taken through a fence. The holes in the green fence were diamond shaped about 1.5 cm wide and I was about a meter from the fence.

Plexiglass:
I also took some pictures through plexiglass but those didn’t work out. The plexiglass was very dirty for all the kids touching it and those viewpoint were also very busy with people.

Bird show:
The zoo I visited held a bird show where they show a number of birds of prey. This gave a good opportunity to try to make pictures of flying birds. I found that my auto focus was not fast enough so what I did was focus on places close to where the bird was going to land or take off. I took many picture only a few where close to be correctly focused, so I still need more practice.

Taking photos of animals is great to do, but not easy. A zoo is a great way to practice and I will recommend doing it if you want to take pictures of aimals in the wild.

Happy shooting!

Bald Eagle

For my self set assignment to go to the zoo, I went to the zoo. To be precise the safari-park Beekse Bergen. Before I delve into I the things I learned there (which I will do in a later post), I wanted to share with you one tip which I wish I knew before going:

Bring a notebook.

I would have been so happy If I would have written down the name of the animals. Now my picture will bare the name “Bird” If you do know the name of the bird let me know in the comments…

Anyone knows the name of this bird?

This tip applies not only when going to the zoo. It is good practice to carry a small notebook with you. When you take pictures there is a lot more information than that what goes in the photo. You can write down things related to the circumstances like “taken just after heavy rain” or “incoming fog” or memo’s for yourself for future shoots “come back here in Autumn”. Hope this tip help you.

Happy shooting