My best of 2018

Everyone else is reviewing 2018, so here are some of my best photos taken this year. All are from the Columbus Zoo except as noted.

San Esteban chuckwalla

Inca tern (Cincinnati Zoo)

polar bear

Lee, a male polar bear arrived at the Columbus Zoo in November. (Neither of these is he.)

A polar bear and zoo visitors examine one another.

Flowers across the trumpeter swan pond. This photo was taken in September, and they might be asters.

The  foot of a mata mata, a species of turtle

A hamerkop looks quizzical.

rose-breasted grosbeak (female)

a bee

I take 100-150 pictures during a 2-3 hour zoo trip, although I took 297 during my latest trip to Toledo December 15. Some photos are of signs so that I can later identify the animal. I delete horrible pictures from the camera and more after I get home (I keep too many, though). I'm happy if I get half a dozen top-notch photos.

Whose feet are these?

These feet are from animals that appeared in previous posts. Whose are they?

A

B

C

 

D

E

F

G

Phoebe's new girl

Phoebe, an Asian elephant, gave birth to a girl December 6th, and mom and daughter are already spending some time on exhibit. I'm sure the Columbus Zoo has excellent photos, and there is video, but here are my shots from today.

Five-day-old baby, with mom's trunk

Phoebe and daughter

Phoebe keeps the baby pretty-well covered in straw and wood shavings.

Grand Cayman (blue) iguana

This is Burt, a Grand Cayman iguana. He's one of my favorite subjects because he's so interesting looking. His head looks like that of a dinosaur. Okay, we don't really know what dinosaurs looked like, so let's say his head looks like that of a movie dinosaur. He's got spines on its back and down his tail. Also, the lighting is good and he doesn't move much. Burt is about 2½ feet long.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

You might notice that Burt appears in different colors. As I (mis)understand it, the camera examines the scene and looks for white. Then it produces colors using the white reference. If there's not any true white in the scene, then the colors can be shifted.

In picture 5, the iguana looks blue all over, but he's not that blue; blue is most prominent on his head. Everything's green in picture 4. Photos 3 and 6 are fair representations of colors. There are settings on the camera that can be used to get more accurate colors, but I don't know how to use them yet. That and while I'm shooting I don't remember that they're available.

A blue-bellied roller in flight?

I first became familiar with the blue-bellied roller a few years ago at the Toledo Zoo, and it's one of my favorite birds. The missing gardener and I were stunned when we saw flashes of sky blue on its wings when it flew. (We call such features "secret feathers.") Naturally, I want to capture those wings.

The rollers in Toledo didn't fly much. They mostly sat as high as they could under a skylight (the aviary is indoors), and we felt a bit sad as we projected wistful longing onto them. One June day in Columbus, a roller was flying back and forth between a perch closer to me and one farther away, and I seized the opportunity. Here's the far perch:

All I had to do was take a photo right after the bird lifted off. One of my early attempts wasn't good, but it gave me some confidence.

Things went downhill from there. Here's a liftoff from an artificial vine:

I made numerous attempts and concluded it was very unlikely that I'd be able to predict when the roller would take off. Also, I wondered if the camera's autofocus was fast enough to adjust to the bird's movement, so I tried manually focusing a little in front of the launch point. The lens doesn't have a distance indicator, so I had to guess, and the results were blurry.  Then I decided to try to take the picture before the bird landed. After all, I knew where the roller would land and when it was approaching. I got some half-decent shots, but none with wings fully spread.

January, 2024: Now I know I should have used continuous autofocus, which is made for moving subjects, instead of single-point autofocus, which is best for stationary or slow-moving subjects.

A different day I managed a cool shot:

I didn't even try to track the bird in flight because I don't have that skill. I'll keep practicing.

I had better luck in the parking lot one day. I could track this gull I think because it was farther away than the roller.

The roller does pose nicely.

Shooting through mesh

There are usually barriers between animals and a zoo visitor, and I'm learning to handle them. Photographic success depends partly on the distance between the camera and the fence or mesh and the distance between the fence and the animal.

I've read that it helps if the camera is close to the fence. Then the camera can more easily focus beyond the fence and on the animal. It's often not possible to get close to the fence, but sometimes the photo works out anyway.

Here, the fence is 3-4 feet away from the path I was standing on, and a strand of fence wire is visible as a light horizontal blur against the bison's dark nose and hair. The bison was 20 feet or more behind the fence.

A bison lounges 20 feet behind a wire fence (Columbus Zoo)

Here, I was the same distance from the fence, but the bison was close to it. With little distance between the fence and bison, the camera could not make the fence disappear. 

Bison close to a wire fence (Columbus Zoo)

With a fence like this one, it's possible to shoot between the wires and leave them out of the shot altogether. I almost did that with this shot.

Bison with a fence wire in the foreground (Columbus Zoo)

Sunlight was shining brightly on a snow leopard's mesh, so I played artiste and tried to use it as a picture frame.

This one would be better with more of Shishir's head, and possibly his ear, in the diamond. It still wouldn't be a great picture because his head is turned slightly away.

Snow leopard through shiny mesh (Toledo Zoo)

This one is better because the cat's mouth is open, but his eye is obscured. Not a particularly good shot.

Shishir, a male snow leopard (Toledo Zoo)

Here's an example of disappearing mesh. I posted a full Bornean crested fireback a while ago; here's a close-up.

Bornean crested fireback (Toledo Zoo)

This Meyer's parrot, about six inches long, is in the same enclosure as the fireback, and it's on the mesh at the front. (The bird's body looks out-of-focus to me, and manual focus might have been a better choice. It's hard to say with the mesh in the way.)

The mesh was a couple feet away from me, and the fireback was a good six feet beyond it. The mesh must have had some effect on the fireback photo, but I don't see it.

ABP - Always Be Preening

Birds spend a lot of time taking care of their feathers. All photos are from the Columbus Zoo.

African grey parrot

blue-winged teal

black crowned crane

hadada ibis

Sometimes it helps to have a partner. I suppose this is how some birds maintain the feathers on their heads and necks.

Humboldt penguins

trumpeter swan

Click any picture for a larger image.