Shooting Pandas

With Taiwan about to go fully “panda crazy” after China’s goodwill gift of two of the endangered animals, I thought it would be a good time to look at a few tips and tactics for zoo photography. As probably everyone in Taiwan will be trying to visit Taipei Zoo this year, take a few minutes to read the following and turn your zoo photos into something special.

While it’s no where near as exciting as shooting animals in their natural setting, zoo photography has the advantage of being a lot easier, cheaper and more accessible than a trip to the jungle or the African plains. One further advantage is that you can get a lot closer to the animals, thus lessening the need for heavy, expensive long telephoto lenses. Of course, there are disadvantages in the form of crowds, cages, wire and glass, and so today we’re going to take a look at a few ways to overcome these.

A hippo drinks at Kaohsiung Zoo, Taiwan

Before we look at techniques, lets take a quick look at gear. Obviously, you’re going to need a camera. It doesn’t need to be a big, expensive pro-camera; any basic DSLR or point-and-shoot will work. With the DSLR, a lens that goes out to 200mm is helpful; for point-and-shoot users, a 10-12x optical zoom would be great. A lens hood is a very useful accessory to have as you will sometimes have to shoot into the sun; the hood will help cut down on flare, and will be useful if you need to shoot through glass. Other helpful but not essential gear would be a macro lens for places like butterfly enclosures and a tripod or monopod for some extra stability.

Primates at the zoo

Now, lets look at some techniques.

Shooting Through Glass, Wire and Barred Cages

This is one of the biggest issues you will face when shooting in the zoo – how to take shots without the wires and bars being visible. At times, there’ll be gaps between the bars that you can shoot through. These are often found close to gates to take a look and see if there are any access gates. With wire however, there’s no way to shoot through the gap, so we must shoot through the wire itself.

To do this, there are a couple of simple steps to follow. Firstly, get as close to the cage as possible (and safe). With a long lens, or a point-and-shoot zoomed to its longer end, wait for the animal to get as far back from the cage as possible. Select a wide aperture in order to get a shallow depth-of-field, focus on the animal and take your shot. If your camera doesn’t allow manual control of the aperture, try setting portrait mode which should automatically select a wide aperture. In many shots taken like this, you won’t even notice the cage in the final image. Alternatively, you could step back, select a wide lens and emphasize the cage and bars as a statement on animals in captivity. To shoot through class, get in close with a lens hood to minimize reflections and shoot at right angles to the glass. Make sure that your flash is turned off.

Indian Hornbill shot through a wire cage

Composition Tips

With the man-made aspect of a zoo, there is often an easy to see order to the display habitats. Look for this and use it in your photos where possible. An example of this can be seen in the following where the feathers of the peafowl and the log make an “X” in the foreground. Keep an eye open for these kind of strong diagonals, as well as any other linear or circular patterns.

Peafowl and log form an X

A 200mm or 300mm lens (or 10-12x optical zoom) allow you to focus on small details of the animals. Zoom in and look for these details instead of always trying to get the entire animal in the shot.

Giraffe detail

General Tips

Plan your day. If the zoo publishes a list of feeding times, try and time your day so that you can see some of the animals being fed. Along with dawn and dusk, feeding times are when animals are at their most animated.

Pay attention to other people. It’s always a good idea to keep and eye on other zoo-goers. A zoo is usually fairly crowded and people are usually happy and relaxed, so it’s a good opportunity to get some impromptu people shots.

Be patient. Spending a bit longer at each display will make it more likely that you’ll capture the animal in a “perfect pose”. Rushing around from animal to animal and your pictures will look hurried.

I hope that these tips are helpful to you on your next trip to the zoo. Be sure to comment and let me know how things go. And for those of you in Taiwan, the pandas can be seen from January 26th at Taipei Zoo.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 15:11. It is filed under Learn and tagged with tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.