Work’s been busy, and the trip to Houston reminded me that it’d been far too long since I’d visited my home Denver Zoo. So, upon returning home, I grabbed the 400 and took a trip on a snow day. Boy was it worth it.
I got an okay wild dog portrait. I got Lisu, the clouded leopard, sleeping in her log. But Yuri was walking around the perimeter of his side of The Edge, and nobody was there but me.
I can recognize a lot of behaviors in my zoo friends, which means having a pretty good idea of where they’re going to be going when they’re moving in certain directions. So when I see my buddy Yuri walking away from me on this particular side of his habitat, I know he’s about to come right back. Camera up, viewfinder ready, settings good. He comes around the tree and bam! Pop pop pop pop pop. Start shooting off short bursts of images.
I don’t always know what I got. I don’t chimp anymore since moving to mirrorless. There’s a bit of shutter blackout which means I don’t get to see what the sensor saw until I get home and load it all into Lightroom. You see an image like this, even in thumbnail, and it punches you in the gut. It looks even better printed and hanging on my wall.
The Zootographer 