Happy late Valentines Day! Mindy and I spent yesterday at the Woodland Park Zoo. We LOVE going to the zoo, so it was a great way for us to spend time with each other.
At feeding time, the orangutans were fed in part with jello hearts that were stuck to the windows:
Normally, animal photography is done in color, but as I processed these images of the gorillas it was clear they needed a duotone (basically black and white) treatment. They were so expressive and their skin was so full of texture. I hoped that by removing the color I could draw more attention to their amazing hands and faces. All of these shots were shot through glass.
It was a pretty relaxing day. I watched this grizzly bear for probably close to half and hour (which is quite a bit of time when your wife doesn't have a camera and would probably like to move on...) He was resting most of the time, but every once in a while he would start to wiggle an ear and then he'd open his eyes and start to move his head around. This was the one time he sat up... he was one of MANY animals I caught yawning on film (digital film).
Was the Woodland Park Zoo a good zoo for photography? Not so much for me yesterday. It was difficult to set the animals against a natural looking background and many viewing areas have hand smeared glass between your camera and the animals. One positive feature was that some glass viewing areas had glass that was leaning away from the viewers. That can be nice for casual photography because if you use a flash, your flash won't reflect back at you. I can imagine it would be better if the animals in some of the open air cages were closer and more active.
