The colors are, of course, heavily saturated (and there are some techniques to go beyond what can be done through normal saturation -- I don't know what techniques this photographer may have used.) One of my favorites is a technique where you extract the luminance channel from the image and then drop it into the image as a saturation. The result is that the more luminous the object... the stronger the saturation.
As for the 'zoom' effect. Most zoom lenses are not "parfocal" meaning that as you zoom them, what "was" in focus at one focal length will no longer be focused at the new zoomed focal length. But it turns out there are _some_ lenses that technically qualify as "parfocal" (the focus remains regardless of zoom.)
Roger Cicala of Lensrentals lists a few lenses that are 'parfocal' (but I think elsewhere he claims that no photographic lenses are truly parfocal). Anyway, here's the link:
Photo Lenses for Video You'll notice it is a very short list.
I am struggling to believe you could "touch" the focus ring and not disturb the stability of the camera enough to ruin the image. I think you may have to try to rig a way to rotate the zoom ring without actually "touching" it with your hands. Maybe you can make it work, but my guess is you'll have to do a bit of testing to find a technique to get this to work without shaking the camera enough to ruin the image.
If you do get it to work, please post back your technique. I'd love to know how you did it.
Good luck!
