Canon 1D Mark II with EF 300mm f4L @ 1/3200s F/5.6 ISO 400.
I love these black-tailed prairie dogs at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. Their exhibit near the front entrance is normally my first and last stops whenever I visit the zoo. Whenever I first approach them, they become alert and some even rush to their burrows. The key to shooting them is using a long focal length lens, getting as low as you can to shoot them at their eye level, and waiting until they get acclimated to your presence. I've also found that sunny days are best to show the shine in their fur as cloudy days bring out more of the dark areas of their fur.
I like the closed eyes on the first fellow as it seems like he/she was trying to look cute for the picture. The second one takes a break from munching on his carrot to observe me and my intentions. After a few seconds, he happily resumed his snack.
I didn't do much editing on these images. I shot in RAW (as I always do) and edited in Lightroom 3. I use a preset I call 'QuickEazy' that I use on the vast majority of my images. Individual settings in LR3 will depend on your camera and the image out of the camera. Adjust and see what comes out to your liking. With the Canon 300mm F/4L lens, an excellent zoo photography lens, I almost always shoot at f/5.6 to give me some speed and a good bokeh. ISO 400 helps with keeping the shutter speed up, too. In shaded areas I'll pump it up to ISO 800. I have found myself using up to ISO 3200 but that was on indoor exhibits such as snakes and frogs. To help with the speed and because the animals are usually closer, I use the 100mm F/2.8L Macro lens instead. I'll talk more about low-light zoo photography in a future post.
Canon 1D Mark II with EF 300mm f4L @ 1/3200s F/5.6 ISO 400.
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