Following on from a fairly recent visit to Barrow’s South Lakeland Animal Park and with a particular interest in seeing the well publicised Chinese pandas, my latest trip was to Edinburgh Zoo.
Noisy flamingos
Unlike with many of the animals, thanks to a zoo layout that could have been better, I did manage to get a close look at the large number of flamingos; noisy bad tempered birds judging by their behaviour! I wanted to capture a sea of heads together, which wasn’t easy because of obstructions and their movement.
Underwater penguins.
Photography should always be fun… A shot which amused me, was of my friend Gillian attracting the attention of the diving penguins with her yellow umbrella. A great display area except for some reflections on glass and murky water. Whilst slow on land, I observed penguins like torpedoes under water. Fascinating to watch.
Dazzling zebra stripes.
A case of zebras crossing!.. two zebras together caught my eye. I wanted to zoom in just on the stripes and show the curved line of the back separating the two, to creating a striking picture.
Majestic lion.
Located safely away from the zebras, I caught this nice shot of a lion. I used a small aperture to give me a short depth of focus. This blurs the fencing as to make it fairly invisible, as a well as making the lion stand out nicely against the background. A different camera setting would have instantly ruined the shot. Beware those of you who rely on auto focus settings (you’d have a lovely photograph of a fence) and auto aperture (a likely case of spot the lion)!
karaoke panda!
I spent a while watching the Giant Pandas; this one is the male panda ‘Yang Guang’. Photographing through glass was unavoidable, but dull lighting reduced reflections. Shame about the brick wall in the background, but at least he stands out well munching away amongst the eucalyptus .
Closer to home, the following day I was photographing much more domesticated animals at a big dog show in Morecambe. View my photos HERE.
More Photographer’s Ramblings coming soon.