WOODLAND PARK ZOO
Five straight days of rain finally broke and today was a pretty decent one weather wise, it was dry and not cold, what else could I ask for? My wife and I decided to take the kiddo out to his first trip to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo and I figured it was a good opportunity to attach my 70-200mm F2.8 OSS G Master Lens to my A7RIV and take them for a spin. I absolutely love the 70-200, I mean look at the clarity and focus in this photo, especially on the antlers! This is definitely one of my favorite photos from the day. Aside from its focus ability, reach and color rendition the thing I love the most about the 70-200 is that it features OSS. OSS paired with the A7RIV’s IBIS produces phenomenal results! Every photo in today’s adventure was shot handheld, including the ones at 200mm! I had minimal shots out of focus for the day, a true testament to how awesome the 70-200 really is!
I loved the framing of this photo with the giraffe standing behind the rock and branches, and I was also extremely happy with the focus, but the color was driving me insane. The reality is, the foliage behind the giraffe was too close in color and was therefore making it extremely difficult to create a separation. I attempted to edit the color feel of this photo a number of different ways and even attempted to create a false background blur after the fact in post, but was just unhappy with it. Turns out that sometimes if you are unhappy with the color it is best to just ignore it and go black and white. Just like that I went from unsure, to happy with the photo.
Another one of my favorites from the day! It took me about fifteen to twenty minutes of standing around and waiting to get this shot exactly how I wanted it. The clouds were overhead and blocking all light from the sun creating a very uninteresting feel to the background but after waiting for a while my patience was rewarded. The clouds moved just enough to create a sun ray that perfectly hit the background lighting up the leaves and grass making an excellent contrast to the color of the wolf’s fur and the tree bark. Again, patience can be the key to getting a great photo rather than a basic one.
Like the giraffe, this is another photo where I was happy with everything except for the color, thankfully I learned my lesson the first time and didn’t waste much time converting it to black and white and then working with it to get the result that you see here.
Another testament to the 70-200’s awesomeness is this photo. This was shot at a distance while also having to shoot through a net like fence material. Typically these nets or fences cause lenses difficulty in focusing as they are right up close to the lens and often too close for minimal focusing distance to differentiate where you are attempting to set focus to. Outside of the lens, I am happy with this photos as I got the framing how I wanted it with the branches and got the eagle right as he turned his head in the direction I wanted. I find it that typically being patient and getting exactly the shot that you want pays off, even little things like the way his head is rotated can make a big difference in the final photo.
I am extremely happy with the level of detail and clarity I was able to get with this photo, especially considering that I was shooting through a very thick glass wall. Circular polarizers can go a long way in preventing reflections and haze.
Less about the photo and more about the bird, this exact bird stood in this exact spot three years ago when I last shot at the zoo. Super random, so I had to take a picture of it again.
The zoo exhibits created quite a few challenges with lighting as many of them had hard shadows and lots of contrast created by covers, trees and other obstacles that were only partially obscuring the suns rays, also didn’t help that I was shooting at exactly 12, noon, my least favorite time to shoot outdoors.
As we were preparing to leave for the day and rushing out since my son needed to find a bathroom I had no planing or prep in this photo, as we were walking by, I did a quick incamera exposure check and took one photo, just one, And the one I took got it all right, the color, the exposure and the focus. Sometimes it pays to get lucky, or maybe I’m just starting to improve. Till next time…
