Lukey's Zoo Photos

For this trip, Lukey was using one of my smaller Panasonic cameras. At the zoo, however, he had a fairly long zoom lens mounted on it so he could zoom in on the animals. Although it had pretty good reach, physically, it was a smaller lens. This "medium-long" lens was smaller than the lens that Kenzie was using but his camera was probably a hair larger than the camera Kenzie used. Putting aside the physical size differences of these little cameras, as I mentioned in the previous blog entry with Kenzie's zoo photos, I think both Lukey and Kenzie had to get used to having that zoom available. Until this trip, they had always used my cameras with a single focal length prime lens... no zooming available.

I'm noticing that Kenzie seems to gravitate toward seeing and capturing the whole scene whereas Lukey seems to like picking a subject and zooming in on it. Neither is necessarily better than the other although the zooming in that Lukey did probably minimized background distractions. For the most part though, this is simply a difference in photographic style and something I noticed while reviewing their photos from this trip. It doesn't surprise me that they would have different photographic styles. Actually, I'd be shocked if I couldn't see a difference in their shooting styles.

You'd think a zoo would be an easy place for capturing photos of animals but, in reality, zoos can be difficult for photography. The backgrounds are often distractingly busy so, as a photographer, you need to try to find an angle that minimizes these distractions and that is extremely difficult to do and sometimes impossible to do. Another problem is that animals are often unwilling models so you don't get the best angle of them and they always seem to be in the midst of distracting objects. And, naturally, they don't pose for you! Hmmm... well... on a very rare occasion, you do find an animal who is very adept at posing and it is obvious they are knowingly posing. Overall though, capturing impressive photos while visiting a zoo is different and difficult.

Even considering these difficulties, Lukey did well!