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Zoo Photography Tips

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Top Zoo Photography Tips

© Markuso53 | Dreamstime.com

What a wonderful opportunity to create some absolutely beautiful images of a plethora of the world's wild animals in a safe and secure setting. I know that I have taken this trip a number of times myself and have always thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the resulting pictures from each and every trip.

There are a number of things that one will want to take into consideration before taking a trip to the zoo to photograph the wild animals of the world. Among these are, lighting, shutter speeds to capture and isolate movement, glare from enclosures, distance from the anticipated subject, and barriers in place to maintain safety of the visitors.

• Lighting is a serious consideration as you will often be taking shots both indoors and outdoors. If you are using a camera that uses conventional film, higher film speeds will allow you to capture pictures inside buildings without the use of often troublesome flash requirements to obtain a functional shutter speed/aperture exposure for each and every shot.
• A fast shutter speed will allow you to capture faster moving object such as busy monkeys or flying birds without troublesome blurring that will ruin your shots. The ability to shoot at higher shutter speeds is a must for many of the creatures that will capture your interest while traveling through the zoo.
• Glare from inside glass enclosures can be a daunting problem. A good accessory for your camera is a polarizing lens that will eliminate the glare that can be generated by the glass enclosure. Another option is to make sure that you place the camera lens as close as possible to the glass enclosure, as this trick will help to minimize the glare if you do not have a polarizing lens.
• Another feature that you will want to consider is a good telephoto lens as many of your subjects will be long distance away from you and you will want a high quality telephoto lens to be able to draw the subject into the picture frame for a high quality picture. In addition, you may be confronted with other types of barriers such as cage bars or fencing that will ruin the shot if these cannot be mitigated somehow in the shot. The use of a telephoto lens may, if the barrier is close and the subject is far away, virtually remove the fencing or the bars from the shot as they will be too close to the lens to fall into the focal range of the picture exposure range.

These tips, along with a good dose of curiosity and knowledge of framing the shot, will ensure that you enjoy your shoot as well as the finished products. There is nothing quite like a wonderful picture of a wild animal to peak one's interest and amazement. A trip to the zoo with your camera bag in hand is a wonderful experience that should be enjoyed at least once by everyone that enjoys photography, so plan a trip to your local zoo today!

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