Zoo Photography: Lions

Photographing lions, as with any other animal, will depend on what kind of exhibit the zoo has them in. At the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, they're outside but you can see them through glass. There are no fences, just a solid wall with three large glass openings for viewing. In Syracuse, the exhibit was actually indoors while the lions playing area is outside. This required different settings and lenses as the lions were somewhat closer.

In Washington, DC, at the National Zoo, the lions are fully outside but you are a lot further from them so you will need a 300mm with a teleconverter or a 400mm. When I say far away I mean FAR AWAY...my 300mm couldn't fill up the frame without showing a lot of the background, which I avoid doing so as to project them in the wild.

The shots I will show here were all taken at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore which has a couple of lions, a male and a female. The lions are not particularly active at any specific time that I know of, so you will more than likely find them lying down or in one spot they seem to like. The good thing is the spot is great for shooting their portrait.

As usual for outdoor exhibits, I used a Canon 300mm F4L IS on a Canon 1D Mark II and edited in Lightroom 3. For some of the shots, I had to remove a blue tint because of the glass reflecting the sky. Took all precautions I take while shooting through glass, but sometimes things just happen how they want, which is why we have computers and software to fix that.

Shot of lion and lioness resting while looking in opposite directions.

The lion posing for me. His intense gaze every time I go by his exhibit makes me wonder whether he has never seen a handsome fellow before, or whether I'm the biggest antelope he's ever seen. Hope it's the first.

Here he looks like he's about to attack but he's really just getting ready to lay down.  The intensity of his gaze is scary, though...I'm very glad for the invention of glass.

Lying down with paws crossed.

He's a good model whenever I pass by his exhibit. The lioness is normally in a spot with a fence showing prominently in the background, so her pictures will definitely come out as having been taken in a zoo.

If your zoo has a way to project these majestic kings of the veld as being in their natural environment, try to bring that in the images. If not, try to take portraits seemingly depicting them in the wild.

Good luck and happy shooting!!!

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Zoo Photography: Some Basics

You've finally saved enough money to get yourself a nice camera and maybe a telephoto lens and now you're ready to delve into the world of nature photography. It has taken you months, years if you're one of those hardest hit by harsh economic conditions, and you are ready to show the world what you are capable of now that you have the right tools. Alas, however, a ticket anywhere outside your city's limits is, well, out of limits. Even if you sacrifice two meals a day for the next six months you still won't be able to get a ticket to Yellowstone let alone Serengeti. Oh, but you've seen those images of stampeding wildebeest, giraffes's heads towering over trees, lions stalking their next meal, cheetahs speeding through the veld. You've seen them all and you know you're as capable as the next photographer to capture the next National Geographic Image of the Year.

That's when you realize your city has its own zoo. You get your equipment, get some coins from the change jar, and hitchhike your way to the zoo. You smile, grasp your equipment- we're talking camera and lens here, folks- and head for the nearest exhibit. You snap away, but something is missing. It just doesn't feel like you were on Safari. The animals are there, but even you know your images won't fool any of your friends, let alone win you a prestigious award.

You know what's to blame. Those darned fences, glass barriers, and unnatural exhibit environments. Seriously, who has ever seen The Lion King's Timon sitting under a red light? Or a chimpanzee swinging on a tire swing in the wild?

You don't have to worry, though, there are others who've been through your shoes, yours truly being among them. I'll show you simple ways to shoot different exhibits.

1. Through Wire Fences

The trick here is two-fold: Use a long focal length lens and get as close to the fence as possible. Some zoos don't allow you to go right next to fence, so make sure you don't jump over whatever barrier they erect. Those barriers are there for your safety and that of the animals, so obey the rules.

You also have to watch where the sun is as it will reflect off the fence and will be noticeable in the image.

Leopards mating.

See the milky areas around and on the leopards? That's the reflection of the fence. The opportunity was a godsend...how often do you see mating leopards? It was the perfect situation at the wrong time. The sun was setting behind me, so the fence threw the reflection at the camera. Another factor, which I would have been able to overcome if it wasn't sunny, was there was about 3 or 4 yards between the fence and where I could stand. So, if I was closer, or the sun wasn't too bright, it would have been a much better shot.

In the image below, the arctic fox was shot through the wire and the sun was not behind me throwing a ghosting effect in the images. However, the animal was close to the back fence and it still showed in the image.

Arctic Fox

2. Through the Glass

Some people say you have to put the lens, preferably with the hood, at a slanting angle to the glass, but from my experience it's best to put the lens at a 90-degree angle perpendicular to the glass. This works to minimize reflections. Look at the glass and pick an area without reflection. 

Lion through the glass. Outdoor exhibit.

Blue Iguana through the glass. Indoor exhibit. 

3. Environment

The hardest thing to accomplish is to make the animal look as if it's in its natural state. The key is positioning and isolation. Position yourself in the best place to isolate the animal. Obviously, this eliminates wide angle lenses, I have yet to shoot any zoo animal using anything less than a 100mm lens, which I use primarily for indoor exhibits. 300mm is ideal for the zoo and there are a lot of good inexpensive lenses at that length. 

Another trick is to use a large aperture. I normally shoot at F/5.6 to isolate the animals. Indoors, I increase it to F/2.8 and would go higher if my lens allowed.

Elephants with fence in the background

You can see the fence in the background and there was just no way I could get it out with the longest lens I had. The elephants exhibit at my local zoo is really not set up to allow good shots, so I only go by there to look at the elephants and not to shoot. 

Here's one of a bird with the background blurred. You can't tell there's a net above the bird. You can see two large wires that help hold up the net, but they're blurred enough not to cause a distraction. 

Abdim's Stork

Sometimes you just have to walk away from exhibits without shots, or you need a few visits before you can identify the best way to shoot that particular animal- I imagine it's that way even in the wild-so don't feel bad about not getting a great shot of every animal in the zoo. 

4. Be Alert

You never know when a great photo opportunity will throw itself in your proverbial lap. Visiting the National Zoo one day, I exited the Invertebrates house and found myself in the pollinarium.  I didn't plan to shoot butterflies and I'm a lousy macro photographer but I managed to get off a few good shots of the only model who stayed put for me.

Zebra Longwing butterfly

So, keep your eye out, shoot more than the animals most people associate with the zoo. Find animals hiding in interesting places. Shoot flowers and other plants. make it seem like you were there in the wild. 

Roseate Spoonbill

Also watch out for shadows as they will mess up your image. Cloudy days are good to avoid shadows, but the diminished light can affect how some animals look in photographs. Experiment and see which weather is best for the animals you like to shoot. For me, prairie dogs are reserved for sunny weather, while others such as the white stork are good in cloudy weather. If the dark, you want sunny...if it's white, you want cloudy. 

Go, Go, Go

Well, now you have a few basics down. The rest is up to you. Some photographers haunt the same exhibit day in and day out hoping to get the money shot...you might want to try their tactic. Study the animals, their environment, and keep practicing. Never fear being wrong or missing a shot, even the best photographers miss good shots from time to time. All you need is enough great shots to increase your confidence. Even though it won't take you to exotic wild places, it will get you on the way to being a good wildlife photographer. 

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Taking a Great Photograph

One of the first things to learn in photography is shot composition. It's really easy to understand as you compose shots in your mind thousands of times a day, so it's just a matter of transmitting that to the camera and making it capture what you want it to.
Shot composition is simple; It's taking a picture you want with everything you want to show included in it. It is one of the vital things you need to pay attention to when you are taking a picture. The others include exposure, framing, and communication. So, basically, when you take a picture you have to know what you want the image to project to your audience (communication), use the correct camera settings to best project that message (exposure), include the right amount of information in your image (composition), and build the best set for your subject in its environment (framing). These things go together to build a memorable, impressive image. If you look at all the famous photographers and their work, you will see that they take careful attention to each of these components of taking great shots, and it's what makes their work stand out.
So, today we will focus on composing the shot that you want. To show you an example, I will use the picture that I currently have set up as my page header (the one with two benches overlooking a frozen lake with the setting sun illuminating the city in the distance). Here's what the view looked like.

 Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 55-250mm IS @ 96mm 1/50s F/22 ISO 400

Now, the picture is hazy and the white balance is off because on this particular day I was experimenting taking pictures in RAW without bothering to set the white balance either customized or any of the other settings. Here's what it looked like after I touched it up a little in Camera Raw.

As you can see, I was really fascinated by the sun beaming off the city in the distance and I wanted to capture that scene. I did use the Targeted Adjustment Tool to darken the black areas (such as the benches and trees in the foreground) but other than that I didn't do too much to alter the image.
The scene itself is beautiful, and there I didn't cram much into the picture besides what I want to project- two benches looking off into the distance at the city partially illuminated by the setting sun.
However, there is a lot of ground at the bottom and sky at the top that add nothing to the image...if anything, they dilute its effectiveness. So, the next step for me was to crop it and show just that which I wanted to.

 

The result was a simple image above. In this final image, you can see how I used the four components of taking a great shot I previously listed. I wanted to project an image of two benches in a dimming light looking off at the last rays of the setting sun bathe the distant city. There is a feeling of two retirees out of the chaos pace of everyday life and watching the day go by in solemn calm. They are anonymous, in the shadows, and their focus is on something greater than them. This is the communication part.

The second thing is exposure. As I previously stated, I took the image when I was experimenting with RAW, so the original image lacks the precise settings I would have otherwise used had I been shooting just JPEG. In that light, I would have left the ISO at 400, reduced the shutter to 1/30s, left the aperture at f/22, and used a stead tripod with a self-time. Then I would have adjusted as needed based on what the image turned out like. 

The third thing is composition. The main things I wanted in the image was the benches, the frozen lake, and the city and hills in the distance. I didn't want too much of the ground or sky in there as they were not essential to the message I wanted to project. This is why I cropped them out.

The last this is framing, and this is where the tree on the left comes in. You can see it telling you that your eye is to stay to the subjects on its right. The right side is where the light of the sun is coming from, so it's left bare. The left is dark, the right is light, so the purpose of the tree is to guide your eye to the subjects I, as the photographer, want you to focus on. This is how framing can help enhance your image. 

I hope I helped with your understanding of the four components of a great photo and please share your tips in this area if you can. Remember: Communication, Composition, Exposure, and Framing are what's needed to take a CCEF (sounds like "Safe") picture.

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