Al E. Gator

Al E. Gator, originally uploaded by Kirk Howard.

If you are looking for a great place to work on your photography technique or just take some fun great pictures, then take a day trip to your local Zoo.

My wife and I have been to our local Zoo a few times this year. We became members of the zoo in January. This allows us to get to the Zoo as often as we like for free. This week I have been to our local Zoo three times.

Our local Zoo is the Oakland Zoo. However, there are several local zoos’ to choose from in the Bay Area, but the Oakland Zoo is just a few miles from our house.

The Oakland Zoo is located East of I-580 in the Oakland Hills. It is a small Zoo with a lot to offer. It is small enough to tour the entire Zoo within a few hours, but large enough for you to see large predators and large game animals up close.

Some of the main attractions are the crowed pleasers like the Elephants, Lions, Tigers and Giraffes. Last year (2007) the Giraffe family had a new addition. However by the time we got off our butts to see the little guy, he wasn’t so little anymore.

Some of our favorite attractions are the Fox Faced Bats. My wife thinks they are the most interesting of all the exhibits. I like the Ring Tailed Lemurs. They are a fascinating little tribe. I also like the White-handed Gibbons. The young male swings in the trees with the greatest of ease.

This year the Oakland Zoo has introduced another Sun Bear. The Zoo has also acquired two rare lemurs, blue-eyed black lemurs. I haven’t seen them yet. According to the Zoo News it may be some time until they will be fully integrated with the Ring Tailed Lemurs.

The Oakland Zoo also offers a great place to take the kiddos and let them run-a-muck in the new children’s Zoo. No it’s a Zoo with children it… The children’s Zoo has kid friendly animas for them to interact with i.e. the Alligators. They’re kind of kid friendly. They’re cuddly in their own way… The Zoo does have a new petting Zoo, and other exhibits that appeal to the pint size patrons.

Go out and enjoy you local Zoo. Have fun and relax, just make sure you take your “Big Glass”. I have shot most of my images with my Nikon Nikkor 300mm f/4.0 with a 1.4x extender. It lets me get up close and personal with the big cats, without becoming part of the food chain.

Lift Off...

Rebound, originally uploaded by Kirk Howard.

On the Strobist blog I read an article last week about how a reader uses several off camera speed lights to photograph the high speed movement of hummingbirds. In this process of using the off camera lighting he freezes the motion to almost eliminate the blur.

Now consider this a hummingbird will beat his wings from 15 to 200 per second. So you need a high shutter spend and High-speed sync with a strobe to stop the action.

Read more about it here at Strobist Blog., also link over to Pat Hunts Flickr Page and check out more of his work.

The post I read at Strobist blog and Pat’s work is what inspired my photo above of the Rufous Hummingbird, pulling up his landing gear just after take-off. Notice the ripples in the water from the downward air pressure of the wings beating.

I took this at the Coyote Hills Regional Park Nectar Garden. It was the only place I could think of that had a regular visitation of hummingbirds. I went back two days in a row to get this image. As Ms. Brezden used to say “Patience is a virtue in which great things happen”. I know she is did coin it, but man she used to tell me that everyday.

My image was taken with ambient light. I pumped up my ISO to 800 used my 300mm prime lens set wide open at f/4 and shutter speed at 1/2500 of a second. I set my camera on my tripod, and just waited for my quarry to come to me.

In the garden they have three water fountains, bird baths that the hummingbirds like to drink at. The walkway converges right in the middle of these fountains. All I had to do is wait. It wasn’t long and I could hear the familiar, but distinctive click or chirp that they make. I would hear them buzz around behind me. As they would get close to the birdbath I would slowly put my eye to the view finder and slightly adjust the camera to where they might be next.

Hummingbirds can be very skittish. Plus they have a great need not to stay in one place for more then they have too.

Action!...

My life through actions. Actually it’s my life through Photoshop CS3 Actions. Earlier this week while I was furiously trying to catch up on all the photography blogs I follow, I found a tutorial by wildlife photographer Moose Peterson.

The tutorial is how to create a poster action in Photoshop for a web page. The first few times I tried creating the action I had a few hiccups. Then when I got the hang of creating an action, I felt more confident to create and work on my own. I took his action and put my own spin on it.

It really is a process of trial and error. Unfortunately I discovered you really have to double check your work. Once the action is created and you find a mistake… It is a pain in the arse to correct one line-action. I find that it is better to scrap the whole action and start over. I have managed to shorten a few steps because I have had to redo a few more than once.

If you don’t know how to use or create actions, take the time and learn. Once they are created, you spend less time in Photoshop and more time creating more productive stuff.

Above and below are examples of the poster and picture frame actions I created in the past few days. If you have any question about actions or how I created mine drop me a note and I will do my best to explain what I learned.

Lomo Macaw - Featured in Diablo Magazine

Lomo Macaw, originally uploaded by Kirk Howard.

Diablo Magazine in their infinite wisdom has selected this photo for the Feb. 2, 2009 "Photo of the Day".
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In the September 2008 issue of Popular Photography, Digital Toolbox there was an article “Cheap Shots” that described how to recreate Lomography.

Lomography started about 17 years ago in Austrian photographers got their hands on some cheap Russian made plastic cameras called Lomo LC-A. This came gave them extra contrast, saturation and big vignette. Lomography has expanded from these cheap little cameras.

This is my version of the Photoshop remake of the Lomography PS tutorial.