Shots from a small local zoo (cuteness inside :P )

a_auger · May 12, 2014

So there is a small family owned zoo in my area that's about 15 minutes from my house. My girlfriend and I decided to enjoy one of the first real warm spring days to go for a visit...

1: Lion

2: Canadian Lynx

3: Cougar

4. Owl

5. Baby tiger! The zoo had 3 of these cuties! They are 6 weeks old.

Here's some of the best shots. The lighting for the baby tigers was awful. Dim incandescent lighting and wood pens made for some very yellow pics. I wasn't allowed flash, so I used my trusty 50mm 1.4 and played with the WB in Lightroom.

Being a small zoo, most animals were behind fences (as opposed to glass windows in larger zoos), which made shooting quite difficult at times. With my Tamron 70-300 I managed to shoot behind the fences by focusing on animals that were farther away. I still had some difficulty removing the fences in LR. The owl and the cougar were especially bad, but overall I'm satisfied with the results!

What do you think?

robbins.photo · May 12, 2014

a_auger said:
So there is a small family owned zoo in my area that's about 15 minutes from my house. My girlfriend and I decided to enjoy one of the first real warm spring days to go for a visit...

Must be a fairly well to do family, feeding those critters is not a cheap endeavor. But that is pretty cool.

of the best shots. The lighting for the baby tigers was awful. Dim incandescent lighting and wood pens made for some very yellow pics. I wasn't allowed flash, so I used my trusty 50mm 1.4 and played with the WB in Lightroom.

Being a small zoo, most animals were behind fences (as opposed to glass windows in larger zoos), which made shooting quite difficult at times. With my Tamron 70-300 I managed to shoot behind the fences by focusing on animals that were farther away. I still had some difficulty removing the fences in LR. The owl and the cougar were especially bad, but overall I'm satisfied with the results!

What do you think?

I like the lighting in #1. The baby tiger pic is very cute, but still too much of a yellowish cast at least for my personal tastes. I usually use photoshop myself but this might help:

Correcting Color Cast with Lightroom | X-Equals - Click. Download. Smile.

a_auger · May 12, 2014

How's this?

WB slider's almost as low as it can go...

Here's the Out of camera shot... badly underexposed, but I wanted to keep a relatively sharp picture, that cub was squirming around a lot!