My Zoo Pictures Website

[sabbath999]

First, the link:

http://www.zoopictures.net

Next, three image samples:



and



and

And now, some Blah Blah Blah about us (the wife and I) and the site:

My college degree is in Journalism, with an emphasis in photography. My student job was as the staff photographer for the Public Relations office in the college, doing a lot of sports photography as well as a ton of grip & grins.

After college, my first job was as a photographer for a small daily newspaper. Next, I took the job as the editor-in-chief of a small town weekly newspaper, where I did all of the photo work.

Since I was putting my wife through college and the weekly newspaper didn't pay a living wage for two, I did wedding pictures and studio work on the side. I sold all of my wedding and photography equipment years ago. I pretty much gave photography up, only taking the occasional snapshot with a digital camera.

I had a MAJOR case of photo-burnout, but now I have gotten back into it. First, I sold my old junky second-generation digital camera and bought a "superzoom". That camera is a Nikon 4800, and I used it to take all but the latest zoo pictures. It is "OK", and while one can take some good shots with it, the 4800 is not well suited for animal work.

I got the first D80 and it is (obviously) much better. For those of you who don't know, but may care, animals move fast. VERY fast. When they turn their heads, they tend to snap them around... especially birds. The key to shooting animals successfully is to shoot on continuous mode, at a very high shutter speed, with a low aperture to make that nice blurred background. Light and composition are, obviously, extremely important. The problem is, when you go to a zoo, you are often "stuffed" by the fact that the animals are in a specific place and you can't change your field of view very much (no crawling into the cages allowed).

The Tamron I use I got as part of a kit, and it's not bad. It's a bit slow, but it was only $150, so you get what you pay for. It has decent image quality, and many of the images on the site are made with it. I am saving up money to replace it with a better lens.

After I started getting good results, my wife decided to join me in shooting pictures... so, I ordered her a D80 in a kit with a 4GB memory card, case, etc. Obviously, I only buy Nikon USA equipment with USA warranties from an authorized Nikon dealer. No grey market for me.

The big difference between the two cameras is that she got a Nikon 18-200 VR lens, one of the hottest (sales wise) lenses on the planet. It is a fantastic chunk of optics.

So there you have it. Not that anybody cares.

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[Jim Gratiot]

You have a lot of great pictures here.

But my main annoyance with the site (sorry if this is petty) is that every time you click on one of the zoo links ("Kansas City Zoo '07"), all of the links have to "reappear" on the new page. And there's something about the way those links appear one by one that I find a little offputting. Can't put my finger on it, but you might want to see what other people think about that.