Last year I asked Tim to join me at the Wahpeton Zoo after delivering my lamp order. This year I had more room in the van, so Char and Clare joined us. Like last year it was over 90 degrees. I brought most of my photo gear. I started with my Sigma 400mm lens, which worked well for a portrait of Neena, the Bengal Tiger, but was too long for rest of the animals. I switched to a Sony 70-300mm zoom and used it all morning. We went around the
Chahinkapa Zoo clockwise. Clare enjoyed the smaller animals: watching the Otters swim around, the monkeys climb their cage, and feeding the goats. Char thought the zoo was just the right size. Tim and I photographed the animals. I could have used more time, especially to work around the fences and wait for the animals to turn around. I passed up a number of animals and tried using parallax to shoot around the links in the chain linked fence. This 'perspective masking' in Adobe Photoshop took two photos, offset slightly so that went I masked the links, the animal was showed through the masked. This system worked well in a few cases: The animal was stationary, was set back from the fence, and the fence wasn't too intrusive. [The Cougar and the Camel photographs]
I also have photo sets from:
2008,
2009,
2011.