Steller’s Sea Eagle and Fly at Denver Zoo. 6/23/18. Pentax k-50, Sigma 400/5.6
Sometimes you get lucky. This shot can’t be reproduced. You could sit with Denver’s male Steller’s Sea Eagle for a year, snapping a hundred photos a day, and still not get something in this vein.
I’m not sure whether or not the eagle sees what is in front of him. I assume their senses are quite a bit more refined than ours in terms of detecting things like a fly about to whoosh by. But it certainly looks like he’s looking right at it, probably with the same disdain we feel as we look around for the nearest roll of newspaper or molded rubber swatter.
Sarus Crane at the Denver Zoo. 7/28/18. Pentax k-50, Sigma 400/5.6
The 2×3 format of most modern digital cameras is awesome for landscape photos. For portraits, it’s a little long on the long side. Unless, of course, you’re working with something like a Giraffe or this Sarus Crane. In that case, a little length goes a long way.
Tonks, baby Aye-Aye at the Denver Zoo. 12/14/18. Pentax k-50, Pentax 50/1.4
Sometimes it’s not the resolution that matters. It’s not the sharpness in the center of the lens. It’s not the color rendition or the cleanness of the noise. It’s the fact that you got the photo at all.
This is Tonks. Baby of Smeagol and Bellatrix of the Denver Zoo. Aye-Ayes are nocturnal, so their habitat is set to be lit the opposite of the rest of Denver; around 8am it becomes dusk, and by the time that most people arrive, it’s only lit dimly by a few red LEDs.
So getting a good picture of the pretty girl? Not easy unless you have the kind of access I don’t. Instead, I’m cranking my ISO to the virtually unusable 25,600, dropping the shutter speed to 1/50th (she’s a mover; any slower and there’d be [more] motion blur), and trying to manually focus at f/1.4 at minus a million EV. Manually focus isn’t even right; it implies active movement. I focused on the log which was barely visible, and hung out until I saw the little bebe girl move into frame, hoping to catch something, anything. This was the anything. All told? Not terrible; at least I got her.
Inca Tern at the Denver Zoo. 1/24/19. Pentax K-50, 50/1.4
The Denver Zoo has two places that you really want to go when it’s very cold or very hot out: Bird World and Tropical Discovery. This day was very cold, so I was hanging out in the former.
The third large room of Bird World is home to their sloths, which makes it quite a big draw. And as much as I love a good sloth, I can’t get enough of the Inca Terns that share the same area.
Being a cold day, the zoo was pretty empty and these guys were acting a little more curious about any human who cared enough to visit. Well, not so much these guys as this one guy. I was trying to make a good portrait from the whistling ducks when this fellow landed about a foot away and just gave me that “look at me! look at me! I’m here too!” kind of face.
Turning the camera to him, he was far too low to the ground to make use of the viewfinder if I wanted any angle other than looking down at him. And the Pentax K-50 lacks one of those newfangled rotating screens you can use to use live view in weird positions. So I set my exposure (stopping down to f/2 to get a wee bit more depth of field since I wasn’t going to have the control I wanted), lowered the camera, and put my trust in my years of camera-aiming instinct and the camera’s autofocus.
Clearly, it worked. This little guy got the attention he wanted, and I got a killer portrait out of it.
Meerkat is a weird word etymologically speaking. Anything else I would have to say would be meerly (ha!) copying the Wikipedia Etymology entry. Besides that, I just like this portrait.
Salem the Double Wattled Cassowary at the Denver Zoo. Pentax K-50, Tamron 70-300
Meet Salem. She lives in a part of the Denver Zoo that’s far too often ignored. In a nicely-sized, shady, behind a building habitat, the people who do see her tend to make jokes about turkey dinner rather than appreciate the blue in her neck and the sentience in her eyes.
I, however, fell in love with her at first sight. It was after doing my first DZ Up-Close Encounter that I learned her name. It was after I started volunteering that I had a week of vacation I basically spent at the zoo, saying hi to her twice a day, where she learned my voice and would come say hello when I called her name.
If you are visiting the Denver Zoo, take a quick stop behind Bird World. In the big green habitat, possibly hiding behind a bush, you’re going to find the best animal the zoo has to offer. Tell her she’s a good bird, that she’s a pretty bird. And say hi for me.
Two of Denver Zoo’s female African Lions. 10/2/18. Pentax k-50, 50/1.4
Any time I stop by the Denver Zoo, I run by the volunteer center (one of the perks of volunteering!) and check the event board. There are two words that always bring joy to my heart: Carcass Day.
As part of the enrichment of the animals at the zoo, they’ll often get a chance to feed in a communal setting, much like they would in the wild. Where they get to decide as a group whether to share or fight for the best bits. Where they get to stretch out a meal for a day or two the way they would in the wild.
In this case, it’s a whole lamb for the lion ladies, close enough to the habitat’s edge to safely get this intimate with a 50mm lens.
Male Lion framed against Denver. 12/17/18. Pentax k-50, Sigma 400/5.6
My usual goal in zoological portraiture is to try to keep the environment in the photo looking as close to the animal’s natural habitat as possible. And unless you’re in some sort of post-apocalyptic movie, an urban center is not where most of these guys live. Still, sometimes the “zoo” shot is the one you have to take.
I can all but guarantee you the designer of Predator Ridge saw this shot in their mind while making the initial drawings. I can also all but guarantee you there’s a few thousand people out there with a shot that’s pretty damn similar to this one. Still, sometimes the obvious shot is the one you have to take.
Zoo shot, obvious shot. Neither of those matter in the long run. This is my shot. And that’s all that matters.
Small-Clawed Asian Otter at the Denver Zoo. 7/28/18. Pentax k-50, 35/2.4
Around the middle of last year, I moved into a new apartment. There was a particular wall where I needed some portrait oriented art and I just didn’t really have any. So what does a photographer do? Make their own! I gave myself a rule that day: I was not allowed to shoot in landscape orientation.
The otters in the Toyota Elephant Village are adorable and playful little dudes. They’re always interacting with each other, swimming, wrestling, cuddling. But it just so happened on this one day that this one otter really wanted to climb up on a log, get right up next to the window, and pose for me.
You can get this kind of shot with patience; you can get most shots with patience. But sometimes, luck works out instead.
The Zootographer 