Bright Eyes

The star of the show for many people at the zoo may well be the lion. The big majestic beast lurking just off on the other side of the pen, though very often fast asleep just out of sight. That’s not so much the case when the younger lions are out and about, recklessly running jumping and playing. In this case I caught a moment of one of the two cubs off alone, prowling, and peaking out at the visitor form off in the pen, watching them from just behind a pole, and it gave me the perfect opportunity to capture this beautiful animals bright golden eyes.

Framing at the zoo is difficult,. you’re up against so many challenges, most of which you cannot simply overcome. Sure, we can blur the fence, hide the pen somewhat, but rarely can we just erase the truth of the moment, avoid breaking that suspension of disbelief in our viewers. We have an obvious pole here in the front, and the tell tale cross thatch of out of focus fencing in the back. Then, even at 400mm I had to crop this image in to hide some of the other sins of the photo, but it carries still with it the weight of the moment.

The edit here followed the simple formula laid out in all of my other zoo photos, so you’re likely bored of hearing about it, so, the more important aspect of this photo is the focus. Not the composition, we can’t control where the animal will be moment form moment, we can’t stop them from moving, nor should we try. The best we can hope for is getting as much right in camera as possible in the moment. For this day, that meant in general 1/250th, and animals that weren’t moving too quick, not because I couldn’t get my ISO hire, or because I couldn’t increase my shutter speed, but because it was giving me the cleanest image to bring back home to you. At the end of the day, if the animals are being relaxed and not moving quickly, you should be able to nail focus at 1/250th - 1/500th every time.

Until Next Time!

Aperture: f5.6
ISO: 250
SS: 1/250th
Focal: 400mm

Fujinon 100-400mm