As part of a goal to visit all of the top 10 zoos in America, I took my mom on a two night trip from Denver to Omaha to visit Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo.
My normal habit when visiting a zoo on a busy weekend is to get there early, go to the back, and work my way forward. You get to dodge the crowds for about a third of your visit that way. That was the plan for the day that day, but it was a plan we broke pretty quickly. This shot makes me glad we broke it.
Their Lied Jungle exhibit is a massive open indoor rainforest where the habitats that can’t be open are generally built in such a way where they still look open. It’s been rated multiple times as one of the best zoological exhibits in the country and it’s not hard to see why.
It’s right by the entrance and despite my plans to rush the back of the zoo, I couldn’t help but go in. After passing over the first bridge, we came to an opening in a cave that looked out on a colony of bats. Just as we were arriving, one of the animal care staff was hanging some fruit to give the free-flying fruit bats a treat. Slowly they started to pop over, see if they were interested, before clutching on and digging in.
The beauty of this shot is all thanks to the vibration control and incredible close focus distance on the Tamron 150-600 g2. This was not the most brightly lit part of the exhibit; was shooting around 1/250th. Which with a lens that starts at 150mm is not a lot of speed. In VC mode 3, the lens was theoretically giving me the same kind of shake-cancelling ability I’d have had without vibration control at 1/4000th. While it won’t stop motion of the bat, it didn’t need to. The detail on that tongue is what gets me (see the 100% crop below). The glisten on the fruit. The color in the eyes. And that fur that you just want to pet.
The Zootographer 