If you’ve been following the blog, you would know that I went to the zoo for the Fatherhood assignment awhile back. It was a great place to photograph that assignment!

But how could I be at a zoo and take only pictures of people doing things? I wanted to make sure to take photos of animals too! And not just animals. Exotic animals! Like Iguanas and lions and monkeys! The kind of animals I wouldn’t normally see running around in my backyard. I had my big telephoto lens, too, so I was pumped!

As soon as we walked through the entrance, I started taking photos. Here’s one of my first:

Epic!

Or, maybe not. I needed to slow down. Yes, an exotic species here, but totally a bland, zoo-looking photo.

Do your zoo photos look like this sometimes? In the excitement of being in a fun place, I forget about the art of photography. The elements that make a photo enjoyable to look at, in addition to documenting a fun memory.

So, let’s analyze it. What makes it look like a “zoo snapshot”?

1. Fence in the background.
2. Animals far away.
3. No thought put into the composition.
4. No depth of field.
5. Subject in harsh sunlight.

Ok, it was time to take artistic photos of the animals around here!

Around the corner, it was impossible not to notice this beautiful, vibrant red bird boasting it’s bold color. And it wasn’t even in a cage!

The subject doesn’t fit into the “exotic” list, exactly, but it definitely is a better photo. No fences, the animal is filling the frame, the subject is positioned nicely, there is nice depth of field, and with the help of the shade and a little tweaking in Lightroom, it doesn’t look too much like it was photographed in the middle of the day. However, too bad I didn’t nail the focus! Otherwise, it would have been a really nice photo.

Over where the elephants roamed, the lemurs lurked, the tortoises lumbered, the lions lounged, and the cockatoos stared with unblinking eyes, I did my best to make photos look as artistic as possible, keeping in mind the things I mentioned before. Here are some of my favorite shots:

And here are a few of my almost favorites. They still may be a little “zoo-looking” or have elements in them that are less than ideal, but I still thought they were nice enough to share, especially in light of the fact that a zoo is the only place I would be able to photograph such specimens.

It had been such a loooong time since I had been to a zoo! Back when I was young, we would go practically every year to celebrate my (or one of my 6 brothers’) birthdays! But that was almost 20 years ago. A lot has changed since then, and I very much enjoyed being able to get close to exotic birds and animals, photographing them in as artistic a way as possible.

The next time I was able to pull out my camera just for the fun of taking artistic photos was about two weeks later. And the subject I was photographing had nothing to do with animals this time. Instead, it was more historical in nature. And in Pennsylvania. Can you guess what it was? Will let you know in another blog post!