Looking at the above photo's you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd taken them in the Serengeti, although they were actually taken about 1 hours drive from Melbourne at Werribee zoo. My mate Pete and I, hired a car after checking out Melbourne for a few days ( click to see those photo's) and were on our way to the Great Ocean road, heading towards the state of Southern Australia and Adelaide. We stopped off at the Zoo, which was one of the best I had ever visited, and no animal lover could complain that the animals didn't have enough space, the enclosure's were huge. We boarded a tour bus with open sides and drove around the different enclosure's. I madly dashed side to side in the back of the bus trying to get as many good photo's as I could, whilst Pete sat there laughing at the ridiculous frequency of my shutter sounding off.
I used my 75-300mm f4-5.6 Canon telephoto lens mostly, and mostly used auto focus. Unfortunately I did not have that much experience with this lens of mine, and I should have removed my polariser for more of the shots and stuck to manual focus. I also did not know how to select just the centre auto focus spot in my camera at that point. I am somewhat disappointed after finally editing these some 9 months after taking them, having gathered a wealth of experience since then. Also the lens is a fairly cheap model, costing around £160, or $280 USD as I bought it after San Francisco marathon in 2005. Really I need a decent f2.8 L series lens for this type of shot. Nevertheless, the pictures serve as a reminder of a great day on the far side of the world, seeing some animals I had never seen before in a great environment. |
