PrimeateportraitWM
Feb, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken at a zoo in the early morning. Sometimes you can catch animals in person, but a zoo is never a bad place to practice. I say this with absolutely no shame, I worked hard, woke up early, got my coffee, packed my camera and drove to be there when the zoo opened in fall to catch some golden hour lighting. I got my lens right up next to the hood and found my shots.Time
this was shot about 13 minutes after the zoo opened in the morning in the fall. In fall you can come into late opening times and still catch a great golden hour shot, most folks don't go in fall, but due to dropping temps animals tend to be more active.Lighting
Natural light, looking back I would probably have played with the color temperature more.Equipment
This was a crop sensor shot made with a 300mm f4 lens and the nikon d7200.Inspiration
It is inspired by many of the straight on nat geo photos that you see like this. Don't wait to be offered a trip across the world, if you like shooting animals, shoot them whenever you can and when you do get that magic moment, you will be ready to take advantage of it.Editing
I did use some NIK software for reducing noise, and we did a bit of contrast balancing in lightroom.In my camera bag
These days I keep a d810 at the ready with the same 300 f4. I have also fallen in love with the Tamron 90mm for macro, and the sigma 24-70 ART lens for my wider shots. I also recently added the Sigma 135 f1.8 ART for portrait work to replace my Sigma 50-100 ARt lens which produced perfect portraits on my d7200.Feedback
oftentimes people go to a zoo and try to just shoot fast and keep going. Depending on the time of year, different animals will have different times of the year they like to be active. Try to show up when people are not coming. One of my favourite shots, the snow leopard on my page, was shot in the zoo on the one day it snowed that year and everybody stayed home. The leopards were out playing around and jumping all over in the snow.
