Fresh from Toledo

Not fresh today, but only a few days old. I spent some time at the Toledo Zoo Saturday.

A gray seal or a harbor seal swims upside down.

Egyptian plover

cockatiel (male)

cockatiel (female)

Bornean crested fireback

white-headed vulture

It was Pumpkin Stomp & Chomp day at the Toledo Zoo, and Herbie, who is now 18 years old, and his mom, Emma, did the chomping.

Herbie, a hippopotamus

Death of a Camera

I went to the Columbus Zoo October 9th, carrying both the Nikon D50 and Kodak Z1012. The Kodak takes fine pictures, but the Nikon SLR, which is older (~2006 vs. 2008), is a pleasure to use. The viewfinder is bright; manual zoom is easy; autofocus is fast; the shutter delay is brief; and the camera is quickly ready to take another picture. The Kodak is smaller and lighter; has twice as many pixels; and has a longer zoom, but the motorized zoom control is placed awkwardly on the back of the camera and it seems as though a minute passes before it's ready to take another shot.

I sometimes carry both cameras because of the Nikon's ease of use and the Kodak's ability to seemingly capture more detail.

Anyway, my first stop was the barn and goat yard. I took a couple of pictures with the Nikon, looked at them, and was surprised that they were all black. Lens cap on? No, there isn't one. A leftover manual setting from a previous trip? Hmm. I made sure the camera was set to automatic and took more shots, with the same result. Battery? I knew it was getting low, but it wasn't dead. Still, I decided the battery was the cause of the all-black images and put the Nikon back in the bag.

Here are some shots from that day:

Merten's water monitor

hadada ibis

Amur tiger

Asian elephant

At home I charged the battery and took a trip to the zoo the next week. The same thing happened, which was not good. What had I done? I fiddled around to no avail and pulled out the Kodak. I took two pictures before the camera shut down. I was ready for that and had a second battery... but I'd left it in the car. I called the trip a complete bust and went home.

I searched the Internet for causes of black pictures and followed some diagnostic steps. I concluded that the shutter works but the light/image sensor does not. What next?

The Nikon is not my camera; it's by brother-in-law's. He loaned it to me earlier this year as I was deciding how to replace the Kodak, which has failing buttons and controls. I had settled on a Canon in the same "advanced point-and-shoot" category as the Kodak when my brother-in-law told me the Nikon was mine as a long-term loan. Wow!

I had been secretly wishing for a better SLR, one with more pixels and better low-light performance, but SLRs cost a lot. (My reading tells me a camera's megapixels is less important than the size of the image sensor, but the D50 has only 6 megapixels vs. 12 for the Kodak.) Now that the D50 didn't work, I had an excuse to replace it with something better! My Internet searching for causes of black images also pointed me to the possibility of buying a used SLR, and that's what I did. My Nikon D7000, first produced in 2010, arrived this week, and I told my brother-in-law that I upgraded his camera.

Reptiles

I've never been interested in reptiles, and I've rarely visited them in zoos. I've got nothing against them; it's just that mammals and birds are more appealing to me. However, after my first visit to the reptile building at the Columbus Zoo and a Grand Cayman iguana in particular, I'm happy to try to get compelling shots of reptiles.

This picture looks a little weird/interesting at the top because of reflections from the surface of the water.

Siebenrock's snake-necked turtle

sc

scrub python

Grand Cayman (blue) iguana

black-tailed rattlesnake

I had assumed that basilisks are magical beasts that show up in places like Harry Potter books, but here's a real one.

green basilisk

Aldabra giant tortoise

The lighting in the Komodo dragon exhibit is difficult for me to handle, mainly because of reflections off the glass, so here's a picture of a statue of one. 

Komodo dragon statue

I do my best to identify animals correctly, and I rely mostly on zoo signage. I have a bit of trouble when there are multiple snake or turtle species in the same enclosure.

My first choice for a link to more information about an animal is a page on the website of the zoo where I took the photo. If I can't find a page there, I choose a page on the site of a nonprofit organization such as the Smithsonian National Zoo, a university, or an international wildlife organization.

Does a photograph capture reality?

Does a photograph capture reality? I want to think so. Does a photograph duplicate what I see? No.

A few months ago, when I began spending more time on my hobby, I wanted to take photos that duplicate reality. I'd take the picture and that would be it. It might be out of focus, badly framed, or boring, but the picture would be the picture, the end.

I've been using a Kodak camera for several years, but I thought I should actually learn something about digital photography, so I read a couple of books. I was dismayed that about half of each book was devoted to manipulating photos in Adobe Photoshop. Pictures can be brightened or darkened. Colors can be changed. Soft areas can be sharpened and sharp areas can be softened. This was not for me! My photos would duplicate what I see, the way film does!

Well, I was ignoring realities of photography. I have a pair of 35mm film photos of my dad in our driveway washing a car. I remember taking the pictures because I was in a tree, looking down. As an experiment, I had varied the aperture or shutter speed, and the result was the same car in different shades of blue. Did either one capture reality? Yes, in the sense that both photos showed my dad washing a car. No, in the sense that at least one of the shades of blue did not match the shade I saw. Not only that, but different people could look at the same car and see different colors. What is reality, anyway?

Digital cameras themselves alter visual reality. The light sensors in cameras are not capable of recording the full range of brightness we see in the world. The result is that, sometimes, bright areas of a photo are completely white, with no details. For example, here's a trumpeter swan.

trumpeter swan (Columbus Zoo)

My eyes saw indications of feathers all over the swan's back, but the camera could not record those details.

washed-out white feathers

A similar result is possible in shadows and other dark areas that end up completely black. I haven't yet learned how to handle this.

Cameras also do their own manipulation of images. My Nikon can produce three different sizes of JPEG files, with each size requiring different processing. Heck, the mere production of a JPEG image requires manipulation of the information that comes from the light sensor. What's the difference between the camera's manipulating an image and my manipulating an image? Intent? The camera does what it does, but I can decide to manipulate an image. I have nothing against digital post-processing in general, but it feels sort of dishonest for me to engage in it. But I'm a hypocrite! I manipulate photos by cropping them.

So, does a photograph capture reality? Does it matter? What's my goal, a nice picture straight from the camera, or a nice picture? I don't have Photoshop, but I do have Corel PaintShop Pro... 

Bears being bears

This brown bear is either Brutus or his brother, Buckeye.

brown bear (Columbus Zoo)

Brutus or Buckeye again.

brown bear (Columbus Zoo)

polar bear (Toledo Zoo)

Black bears come in several colors, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

A black bear strikes a yoga pose? (Columbus Zoo)

A polar bear sits on the underwater viewing dome at the Columbus Zoo.

polar bear (Columbus Zoo)

It was about 95 degrees one day in June at the Cincinnati Zoo, and this polar bear was staying cool. It swam to the far wall, pushed off, and sailed toward the crowd on its back.

A polar bear does the backstroke? (Cincinnati Zoo)

I like birds

In the short history of this blog, I've posted photos of birds 60% of the time. That's because I like birds. They're beautiful, and they can fly. I find them easy to photograph, too (when they're standing or perched). Walk-through aviaries eliminate the need to shoot through mesh or fencing, there's no glass to cause unwanted reflections, and the birds can be quite close.