A Trip to Sydney Zoo

In-your-face close-ups are a great way to add visual impact to almost any image - and especially so if the subject is venomous!
This is a Green Tree Snake photographed in Sydney Zoo's reptile house. 600mm Olympus lens, 1/160s at f11, ISO 10,000, file cleaned up using DXO PhotoLab 5   

 

As is often the case, it's when you are not specifically looking for a great shot that an opportunity presents itself - here in the shape of an Australian Raven that was sitting on a fence watching me eat lunch.

Backgrounds often make or break a shot. In this example you can clearly appreciate that the background is totally separate from the foreground subject, the koala. In a zoo one way to achieve this is to get close-ish to the subject while positioning yourself so the background is a way off (in this case about 10 metres). It also helps to use a telephoto lens with a wide aperture as this is likely to emphasise background softness.
Pic by Natalie Hitchens (200mm lens, f2.8, 1/500s, ISO200).

A good example of how ISO can save a shot - a few years ago I'd never even considered taking pictures inside a nocturnal house (there's a clue in the name - it's dark in there) but with better camera technology and some superb software to clean up the extreme digital noise produced by high ISO settings, you can get some good results. This Yabby was snapped thru glass (obviously) but it was so dark in the exhibit I had to boost the ISO to 12,800 to get a 1/60s @ f5.6 exposure. The excess noise was cleaned up using DXO PhotoLab 5

Here's a reminder about timing. As in the wild, most animal and bird activity can be experience in the early morning and late afternoon. Around the middle of the day your subjects are normally at rest, in the shade - as are these fine wild dogs. Doesn't make much of an interesting shot but I suppose it's a reasonable record of the day (Pic by Natalie Hitchens).

Another reasonable result - this little desert rat only stopped moving for a second or two so first finding, then focussing on the subject was a real challenge. I got a lot of just missed, blurred or plain confusing results. This was the best (sharpest) of the lot recorded with a high ISO of 25,600. DXO produced a remarkably clean looking result, despite the lousy lighting.

Here's a good example of how Auto White Balance can go awry in a place like a zoo's nocturnal house. There was light in this display but it was very subdued and tinted so the RAW file results looked horrible. A bit of jiggling in DXO PhotoLab 5 produced a far more acceptable colour.
(Pic by Natalie Hitchens - 80,000ISO, 1/25s @ f2.8).

Another good idea - meercats are always a big favourite in any zoo - always active, busy watching out for predators or just playing amongst themselves. Here Natalie went for the reflection, adding a different take on an otherwise straight shot. (Pic by Natalie Hitchens - Olympus 135mm lens, 1/8000s @ f2.8).

What was I saying about close-ups? It was hard to get away from this very inquisitive emu. While it was busy trying to peck other people's mobile phones out of their hands, Natalie got this great shot using a 150mm lens setting and an exposure of 1/800s @ f2.8.

Often creative zoo photography can be hard. Sydney Zoo has several posters around its property providing suggesting ways to improve your photo taking. But this can be very tricky if you only have a smartphone - especially as the Hyena was at least 40 feet away. I watch people zooming in on their smartphone screens, blissfully unaware that the more you zoom, the worse the image quality becomes. This hyena was very relaxed sitting in a mud wallow. With a 600mm lens I was able to frame just the back of the animal producing this nice symmetrical pose.

Lizard posing in the nocturnal house. Most of the exhibits in this part of the zoo contain just rocks and sand - not that interesting - so I went for a close up shot of this lizard with a 12-100mm lens. The result was surprisingly good considering the 10k ISO setting shot through plate glass.