Macro Shots

On the weekend I ended up going to Twycross Zoo with my friend to get some decent shots done. I took my Canon 600D and 18-55mm IS Lens but also my 70-300mm Lens to test out some decent close-ups. I didn't take a tripod as most of the shots would have had to be at precise moments of time and it would've taken time to set up the tripod. When I was taking the images i made sure i shot mainly in manual, but obviously switching off the flash in all cases as it would affect and disturb the animals behaviour. But on average i used a high ISO a mid-range f-stop and the shutter-speed was also quite fast around 1/16

I was also aware of all the health and safety hazards that i had to notice to take care of myself and my camera & its equiptment whilst at the zoo. Some of these i risk assessed such as being careful of the open areas where the giraffes / elephants could have damaged my equiptment. Another would have been walking carefully as it had rained and i could have slipped over. Others included being aware of dropping the camera into the pools and even just dropping it and breaking it or getting it dirty. Health hazards included such as washing hands quite frequently and wiping my camera's grip incase I spread flu or bacteria.

Overall I took quite a lot of really decent shots of a variety of animals. I was well prepared on the day and we ended up photographing the animals for about 2 hours and 40 minutes. From 2:00 to 4:40 even though the park officially closed at 4:30 that day, we were allowed to carry on and get as many pictures as possible of the remaining animals before it would get too late.

Since I am overly happy with these images I have decided to use them as my final images. They have very good compositions. Some have very good angles which also bring out the image more. Also I have put these images up onto my facebook account with a small copyright logo just incase but overall i have had many positive comments and likes on the pictures! This is very motivational too aswell as a good way of presenting my images. I will soon be uploading them onto my Deviant Art profile aswell here.

Here are a couple of images that I have taken without any editing whatsoever and then further down you will see the same pictures but some will be cropped and slightly edited. One of the ways I have edited the images is increasing the contrast to give a more cinematic look. I have also edited one or two by changing the hue and saturation as some of the colours on the animals were quite dull due to the lighting.

Normal

This is a shot I got through the fences of the exhibit and took a picture of the common world parrot.

This is as you know a well known meerkat. I took this picture in an open area with walls so i could get various angles without fiddling too much with the f/stop to get the fences out of focus.

Here is a portrait sort of shot of the meerkats. I thought it had a good depth of field in the picture and the focus was well adopted to the animals.

I chose this picture because it had a nice composition of the seagull and its pond. Also it has a very good focus.

This is a shot of a sealion. I took this at the exact time needed for this posture of the animal. The brown colour and intense shapes of the animals mouth showed the picture to be quite grabbing.

This is a portrait of the sealion when it was jumping out of the water. I made sure I got the right composition and also that I took the image from the right angle.

This is a photograph of a monkey behind glass, therefore you can see some reflections, otherwise this image is perfectly constructed, the composition is in good shape with the rule of thirds.

Here's a grey owl. This was an easy picture to take but i got just the right amount of the scene in the picture.

This is a nice close-up I have taken, it has very vivid colours and intense detail. 

This pic has a nice composition showing focus on the head of the bird but blurring out as you get to the edges.

Edited

In this image I have done some minor colour correcting and some cloning to take the distracting stick out on the left hand side. This is good because more focus is upon the parrot.

Here I just changed the contrast to create more focus upon the meerkat.

Here again I have edited the contrast as it works well with the meerkats fur and also I have saturated the flooring upon which the animals are on. And i have enhanced the colour of the meerkat's fur.

Here I have chaged the vibrance of the whole image apart from the bird's legs and beak. These features I have saturated.

In this image I have adjusted the colour vibrance because it was quite dull, but now the image stands out a lot more. I have also cropped the white edge at the bottom to a more snug widescreen look.

In this image I have edited the hue to add slightly more colour instead of the picture being very blank and brown.

Here I have made the animals fur more intense so the focus is more highly upon it and then I had blurred out the background more.

In this photograph, I have decreased the saturation of the owl's yellow fur and beak but also i have motion blurred the background slightly and scaled it to a more grey shade. To increase focus.

On this image, I have sharpened the detail and increased the intensity of the colours using saturation.

Here I have put more focus upon the birds head and blurred out the rest, not to mention adjusting the contrast.