Photos: Adelaide Zoo

Next in my holiday photos instalment. 

We spent a day in Adelaide Zoo, and I actually had a zoom lens, which was extremely fun. On previous zoo trips I've always had to make do with a standard 18-50mm lens, but I now possess a 40-150mm, which makes zoo photos much easier. For those interested in such things, I was using an Olympus PEN EP-3.

I love taking photos in zoos, I get lots of reference material, so I'll happily snap away at the animals just moving around and in different positions (I never know what I may suddenly be called upon to draw), but I also like to work at some shots so that I get some good photos as well. I took several hundred photos that day, and these are my favourites. 

Crested pigeons are always fun

Pygmy marmoset

Hippopotamus

Miraculously clear two-toed sloth (I literally couldn't see anything in that nocturnal house, it makes it extremely hard to focus!)

Yellow-footed rock wallaby

Barbary sheep

Freshwater turtle, possibly a snake-necked turtle, or a mata mata

Gipsland water dragon (I think)

Wang Wang, the zoo's male panda

Chestnut-breasted finch 

Greater flamingo, which arrived at the zoo in 1933

Star finch

Bush thick-knee

These two were in an enclosure labeled 'Siamang' but I'm told they're more likely to be Nomascus gibbons

Baby tree kangaroo

I love otters

Is any zoo post complete without a smug meerkat?

Kookaburra

Red panda – I had to wait ages for a good shot of this, they're so elusive.  And I got trodden on by a kid for my pains =P

 Most of these have had standard post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS6 – curves, sharpening, colour adjustments where necessary, and the occasional crop – but the panda had more intensive work; they were behind hideously reflective glass, so I edited out the distracting reflections. I also made the sloth black and white, because it was distressingly blue, due to the nocturnal house lights.