Howletts Visit (Part 1)

I've always loved looking at wild animals, and when I started getting into photography seriously would come away with quite a few photos. But I've never managed to take any quite as good as I hda on my last visit, and with being a charity member of the Aspinall Foundation, it meant that I would get a free pass every quarter. So I packed my bags with some lenses which would help see me through almost all situations (well, almost)

 

Above shows a Capybara laying in the sun, both taken with different lenses. The one on the left was taken with a 500mm Prime Mirror Lens. Great for long distances and fast shutter speeds (as I didn't want to lug a tripod around I used the fences for support) The one on the right was taken with a 100mm 2.8L IS USM Macro Canon Lens. You'll notice a huge different in terms of sharpness and detail. The Mirror Lens was designed for a film camera, the fact that it fits and locks on my camera was a bonus, but it does mean it has one fixed aperture, what ever that value is I'll never know as the camera displays it as a '0'. All I can say is you need a tripod or something to keep it steady, unless you have enough light to take photos at 1/500 of a second to avoid camera shake blur. The vignetting (slightly darker part around the outside of the photo) was added on as an effect. The one on the right is a modern top of the range optics lens which I had no problems taking photos with at all.

This one is of a Gava Gibbon with her baby (right). Great thing about seeing the monkeys is you get the usually placid mothers, and the very active playful babies (shown below whilst drop kicking some rope netting)

The Giant Anteater was in it's indoor part of the enclosure, so I basically stuck the lens (with it's hood on) right up against the glass to avoid getting any reflection, and as it was darker inside had to up the ISO to make sure I didn't get any blurry shots caused by low  shutter speeds on moving subjects.

Next were the Black & White Ruffed Lemurs, which I didn't know, had a huge open enclosure which the public were allowed to roam freely in. When you're out photographing animals and a chance to take photos without cages, bars or fences in your view finder, you can't but help go 'ohhh' and go straight in. To my right were a couple of Lemurs snoozing in the midday Sun (above photos) and slightly further in I managed to get some photos of one munching away on some apple. Very easy animal to photograph as they take an interest in the noise of the clicks and you pointing some long reflective thing at them, so I managed to get some lovely photos!

 

After I left, I caught a glimpse of the lone Lemur crashing out after my exhaustive visit (see below). Guess it's never done so much modelling work!

Opposite the Lemur enclosure were a couple of Bengal Tigers. While I was busy snapping away at the approach Male Tiger I didn't notice the female laying right near me! Was a quick snap taken just  at the right time as she had obviously grown bored of what I was doing and fell promptly back asleep and out of camera view!

 Part 2 to follow shortly....

(I'll be updating my website to include a gallery soon which will show more photos there and all of them will be available as prints - www.ljsdigitalphotography.com)