By: Jay Lethbridge
As a keen fan and supporter of Zoo Photography, I would just like to support and follow on from Steev’s couple of postings to the Blog regarding Animals in Enclosures and Enclosures and how to overcome them. Many thanks to Steev Stamford for the previous postings.
The Longer the better ;) (Keep your thoughts clean please LOL)
Having a fairly long lens (focal length) is rather important to capturing animals at the zoo and there is not a single time when I don’t have my Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro Telephoto Zoom Lens on the camera body “before” entering the doors of the zoo.
The Longer the lens, the better for most animal captures at the zoo, besides a macro setting (which my lens has also, so no need to change lenses, which is also a bonus whilst at the zoo) for capturing those extreme “eye close ups” or small lizard or amphibious captures, should you wish to.
Bringing it Forward
Behind the Glass - Below is one of my most favourite shots from Paignton Zoo in Devon and this one was a shot captured through Glass, as was also previously mentioned in Steev’s other postings. Although the Cheetah was a good 20-30 odd feet away from the glass, as the title above says, I was able to “Bring it Forward”, using all of the 300mm available to me on the lens and get myself (which looks) really close to the animal, of which I was extremely pleased to get and as you can see, the details in the fur and face are amazing.
Through the Fence - This other image below was captured at Dartmoor Zoological Park, but this time captured through a steel fence, but as has already been stated in a previous posting by Steev, the same principal applies by getting up “close and dirty” with the fence.
Although at Photo4Me the rules state that No Enclosures will be accepted, that doesn’t mean to say that your animal shots won’t be accepted on site if those enclosures are not in the shots. This can definitely be overcome be getting in close and dirty and as you have seen from a few postings here, we may be missing out on some terrific animal shots that you would not normally see unless you have infact captured them in their own environments and for some folk, that is not always possible and the best place for some folk to capture these wonderful animals is infact in a zoo environment.
So, don’t be so disheartened with those rules, it just means that no enclosures are allowed, it doesn’t mean No animal shots are allowed, infact, quite the opposite I would say ;)
I just wanted to show you from another persons point of view what can be achieved with animal captures at the zoo from behind Glass and Through a Steel Fence, but also still come out with some top notch animal shots that can also be very saleable ;)
Copyright ©2015 Jay Lethbridge
You can see Jay's portfolio at the following link: http://www.photo4me.com/profile/jaylethbridge
