The Zootographer

OneRoll – Ektar 100 August 2019

I’m going through a lot of different emulsions right now, some I know, most I don’t, because I plan to combine this OneRoll format with my project of visiting all the top zoos in America: OneRoll, OneDay, OneZoo. I just need to decide what film I want to use for the entirety of the project. So this roll – shot over two visits to the Denver Zoo – was an emulsion I know relatively well. Ektar 100 used to be my both my color film of choice and my go-to film in general. I never did *a lot* of film shooting, so I’m no expert, but I’ve shot more of it than anything else.

These two shots of the Gerrenuks are garbage; don’t know why I took them in that light.

I love the way the lighting works in the various monitor habitats. The strong hot light up above is mostly there for climate control, but that high direct light does a really good job of showing off the texture on reptiles.

Same thing is true with this baby komodo and this… I don’t remember what it is. Even though the second shot I exposed a little poorly. I’m learning to work with the 3d matrix metering on the F5 still, and – honestly – the more I do this the more I just want to go back to spot metering.

Didn’t know how the film would react to aquarium lighting; I don’t like it. At least in this one tank, there’s too much bringing out of the magentas.

I’m surprised that I got this snake in focus. I took two just to be safe and neither of them are terrible. This entire first day was shot on the 28-70/2.8 which has no vibration control at all. I want to say these were done at 1/15th and I feel like I couldn’t have been any wider than 50mm on those shots. I rely on the VC of my modern Tamron lenses a lot, but I do like knowing I can still hand hold at slow speeds in a not awful manner. Zeus the Nile Monitor is always handsome.

The light was on the wrong side of Vinh here, but I remembered pretty vividly how much I love the blues that Ektar produces, so I gave it a shot anyway.

This was the beginning of the 2nd trip, having switched the 28-70 for the 70-200. I’d been having trouble because the Z6 seems to always stop down the 70-200 to F/11ish when it disconnects. It works perfectly when shooting, but disconnecting, it doesn’t leave it wide open, which was troublesome with the fact that the F5 won’t control aperture on it at all. I ended up bandaiding the problem by just putting the lens on the d300s to open up the aperture before putting it back on the F5. There’s probably a better way; I hope there is. I just don’t know it yet.

Oh yeah, These shots are of Ralph the Emu. He’s one of my favorites at the zoo, but this shade was too dark for the ISO100 film. He was also refusing to stay still.

Light wasn’t the best on Drogo here, but I did want to check how the pale blue in his beak would translate.

A quick trip behind bird world found our not-so-baby Sea Eagle perched further away from the wall than normal. Light was bad, and I didn’t want to waste too many frames, but I gave it a one-er just to snapshot it. I also really liked the texture of the clouds back there and then wanted to bring some of that Ektar blue magic to Salem the Cassowary.

The Lorikeets are normally a pretty great spot for photomaking, but the light was again pretty harsh. The third to last frame is my favorite, and it makes me glad I kept working through the bad light to find it. Something neat about birds is their tetrachromatic vision; they can see colors we can’t even imagine; they *are* colors we can’t even imagine. The contrastiness and specular highlighting combined with the high saturation of this film kind of helps sell the idea that to each other, these birds look nothing like what we see; they’re even more brilliant!

Nailed it. Twice. This guy didn’t want to sit still too long, but I got him comfortable enough with me to sneak a couple shots. Swapped to vertical on the second to crop out the fence because he clearly didn’t want me to move.

The cape buffalo was intended to be a throwaway shot, but once I saw the scan I wished I had spent a little more time on them. Even with the light in the wrong direction, I think something could have been done there. The wild dogs napping was just to test how their fur was rendered on the film.

Two last portraits of our cape porcupine. I couldn’t get as low as I would have preferred (without risking getting kicked out of my favorite zoo), but once again the Ektar worked its blue magic. Those tones in the fur and spines are really subtle in real life, but the enhancements brought to it by the film made me really happy.

This one’s For Cliff

Cliff the Bighorn Sheep at Denver Zoo. 5/19/18. Pentax k-50, Sigma 400/5.6

This is Cliff. You unfortunately can’t see him in person anymore, but he was a handsome old man who really brought some majesty to the concrete forms of Denver Zoo’s Sheep Mountain.

Back when I got out of high school, I supported myself though photography and a jazz trio I ran. I did a fair amount of corporate headshots, environmental portraits, the occasional wedding for a friend of the family. I hadn’t yet rediscovered the magic of the zoological garden.

When I did about 18 months ago, I knew a lot less than I know now. It’s actually kind of amazing how much you can learn in that short of time by simply practicing over and over again, making mistakes and learning from them. At the time, I was very happy with this shot of ol’ Cliff. Now, yeah, there are things I’d do differently; I’ve got better equipment for the job that would have brought some more to the shot, I’d have probably stepped a bit more to my left and tried to catch some more highlight in that front eye. But this is one I don’t get to redo, and the portrait has some more magic for me because of it.

Here’s to you, Cliff. You are missed.

Nap Time

California Sea Lion at the Denver Zoo. 9/22/18. Pentax k-50, Sigma 400/5.6

The days that most people consider to be good weather days for the zoo are not good days for photographing. The number of clouds in the sky and the amount of contrasty bad light are inversely proportional. There are a couple ways to work with it, though.

Look for spots where you can turn that overhead blasty floodlight of the sun into a targeted spot light. There’s a lot of cover around this sea lion habitat that can add a some control to the light.

Look for natural reflectors. The rock this sea lion is napping on is very white. There’s also a big white wall a bit to the right of frame. The little bit of fill light I’m getting on the shadowside is all thanks to those structures reflecting light backwards.

Focus on composition. No amount of pulling at that shadows slider in lightroom is going to turn this into attractive even lighting, so pick your subjects and compositions with intent. Turned 45 degrees to camera left, this shot would have been garbage. It would be harsh light over the entirety of the sea lion, all the background elements would have been just as harshly lit.45 degrees to camera right and I’d have been unable to expose properly without creating a massive white halo and introducing all kinds of flaring into the image.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to say no to the picture, and just enjoy the zoo. I’ll show up on days where the light is trash, it’s hot enough that the animals aren’t active, yadda yadda yadda. I’ll put the camera down, and just enjoy the zoo; it’s what it’s there for. If you do find a good spot, that camera is right at your hip anyway.

Going Medieval

Printed sign at Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge. 8/2/19. Nikon z6, Tamron 150-600 g2

Went to make some photos before work. The refuge is 10 minutes from my apartment and 10 minutes from work. Makes it a great place to go if I’m up a little earlier than I need to be.

That is unless you get there to find that you’d be fighting the black death.

Bit of advice: you see something like this? Don’t try to sneak in. I’ll do a lot to get the shot. I’ve hung out my car door trying to get a shot of two black bears fighting with a cellphone just to get the shot (I still didn’t.). I’ve walked to chest deep in water with a car battery on my back holding a monolight in one hand and a dslr in the other to get the shot (back in my portrait days). But the plague? The black death? Yeah. No. I’ll come back later.

Higher than Normal

Denver Zoo’s Burrowing Owl. 7/14/2019. Nikon z6, Tamron 150-600 g2

There are countless burrowing owls that live within a few miles of my apartment. But despite my many drives through the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, I’ve not been able to spot one in amongst the prairie dog holes that cover the area. This handsome man, perched a little higher than you’d normally find him, is an ambassador in training at the Denver Zoo, learning how to engage and educate visitors on conservation issues.

I happened to catch one of these training demos that just so happened to be in perfect light. I was way up close, near the minimum object distance for the Tamron 150-600, but still zoomed in at 600mm. That close, even stopped down to f/7.1 for a bit of extra sharpness, I still got those beautiful out of focus spots from the sunlight wafting through the trees.

Friend of the blog, ZooPhotoTips, made a recent post talking about how great clean glass is. The only thing better than clean glass at the zoo is no glass, and these training demonstrations are a great opportunity to get really good clear images, even if you don’t have a big supertelephoto. A similar shot could have been made with any 50ish-200ish kit lens or a decent 70-300 step-up telephoto.

It’s a Frame Job

Baby Mule Deer at Arsenal. 7/20/19. Nikon z6, Tamron 70-200/2.8 g2

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Was driving through Arsenal, late evening, very overcast. Dark enough that we’re looking at f/2.8 at 8000 iso. I catch mama and bebe to my right through the passenger window. I turn around to get them on the good side. Mama knows what’s up; some looky-loo with a big lens wanting to make some pictures. Baby? She’s still new to this. She’s interested and excited, but also unsure. She’s nudging mom to run, jumping up on top of mom, darting in front of her to ask what’s up. But then, in this moment, right between these trees, she pauses to look at me. To see if I really do mean no harm.

Deer don’t look with their eyes. They might see you with them, but if they’re properly interested, it’s those two big radar dishes on their head that show it. In this moment, with these two big trees between her and me, she *looked* at me. It’s not one of the best pictures I ever made, but I sure as hell do love this moment.

Twilight’s Last gleaming

Swainson’s Hawk under Golden Hour Light. 7/20/2019. Nikon z6, Tamron 150-600 g2

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Had the plan to hit up Arsenal for sunset after an offsite meeting. It was pouring rain at the restaurant and was almost enough to make me call it and go home.

Glad I didn’t.

One of the first trees in had the unmistakable silhouette of a hawk perched upon it. The light was pretty flat, dull, and not very interesting. But I was getting close and was ready for the takeoff shot. That takeoff never happened, but what did change was the light.

The clouds broke, and the sun started pouring out over the rockies, lighting this guy up with magic. As it started cawing, I went full continuous high to get the open mouth.

One thing I’ve gotta say about this is the power of the z6’s high ISO settings. This was at ISO 10000, which is about the lowest I shot that day. I could have gone lower in this instance, but I wanted the shutter speed high as I was still hoping for the takeoff shot. Still, that’s zero noise reduction. When printed or moved to any kind of normal resolution, you’re not going to see an ounce of it. I actually think I pushed as high as ISO 26000 that night; I did use a bit of NR at that point, but still. My d700 practically lived at ISO 3200. Massive shout out to Nikon for how good this looks.

One Roll – Delta 3200 July 2019

Ilford’s Delta 3200 is another film I’d not had a lot of experience with. Samples online showed a pretty distinct lack of contrast, likely owing to it really being somewhere in the neighborhood is ISO 1000, with a design toward push processing. To try to capture some of that contrast back, I shot at 1600. The first two shots were of the most difficult animal in the world to photograph: a tuxedo cat. In this case, William MeowcAvoy, my handsome little man. I definitely could have gone up a stop or two to get more eye detail, but I do see the value of the flat tone curve in this instance.

My next stop was the Denver Zoo. It was the night of the Volunteer Appreciation Party, and I wanted to bring something a little different for photos of that night. Right at the entrance were two of the ambassador animal care staff sharing some of the more charismatic ambassadors. In further effort to increase contrast, I kept a red filter on through all of these, all done on the Tamron 70-200/2.8 g2. The fact that the contrast is just about at the minimum of what I personally care for means I’ll likely go back to my good old tri-x after I finish up the Delta in my freezer.

As part of the volunteer appreciation, the Toyota Elephant Passage care staff brought out Billy for a demonstration with a little more detail, fun, and adult discussion than the normal every day demo. I really like the way the Delta rendered these scenes with the red filter. It really brings out the handsome in our young man Billy.

I don’t know why I keep trying to get good pictures of our Fishing Cats. It’s just not going to happen; the window is garbage. They’ve got a very nice habitat, they’re cute and engaging as hell, but their window is one of the most deceptively bad in the entire zoo. Our eagles were as noble as always.

This is probably my favorite shot in the roll. The way the evening light was breaking through the trees at the flamingo pond was too good not to capture. This is one of those that reminds me I haven’t fallen slave to the digital era; I saw the light, I knew the shot I wanted, and I knocked it out in one fully manual shot. Zoomed in on the highlighted flamingos, metered for them, then pulled back to the composition I wanted. Got exactly what I was looking for (or I would have with Tri-X : D).

I alluded to this in a previous post. I had the roll to finish up on a trip to Arsenal. Caught a Swainson’s Hawk on one of the first trees and knew it was time to act. I did what I never thought I’d do and put the F5 into continuous high. Eight frames per second is not a cheap prospect on film, but sometimes you just know it’s the right place to do it. The last frame is the winner of the pack. Frame 5 would have been incredible if he’d have been facing toward me. But let’s be honest, 25 years ago, back in the proper ending age of film, any of these are shots that the average person would love to get. There’s obviously a bit less contrast here; I had swapped to the 150-600 and I’m not shelling out for a 95mm red filter.

Next up in the F5 is a roll of my old favorite color film: Ektar 100. We’ll see when I get the hankering to pump out those frames.

Treetop Chanting

Black Howler Monkey at the Omaha Zoo. 5/12/19. Nikon d700, Tamron 150-600 g2

Hey, why’s it a black howler monkey if it’s not black!?

Two reasons:

Much like how female white-cheeked gibbons are really just white gibbons, female black howlers never actually turn black.
I’m not 100% certain on the identification; it might not be a black howler, but everything I can find on Omaha’s Lied Jungle only references black howlers and not any of the other howler species.

They Grow Up So Fast

Steller’s Sea Eagle at the Denver Zoo. 7/14/2019. Nikon z6, Tamron 150-600 g2

Kamchatka, the most recent of only 14 baby Steller’s Sea Eagles to be hatched in AZA zoos in the last decade, was born on March 10th of this year. That means she’s just over six months old. They grow up so fast.

This much less good picture is what she looked like at one month old. Such a cutie!