San Antonio Zoo

During my recent trip to San Antonio I visited the zoo on a dark, dreary, drizzly day. Some of the animals cooperated for photographs. My 70-200mm f2.8 vrii lens was an excellent tool as I spent much of the time fiddling with exposure as the light varied widely. I had to work pretty hard to stay on top of exposure settings, bouncing ISO and shutter speed up and down, mostly shooting at f2.8, sometimes opening up to f4, always on the edge of underexposure because of the darkness.

Restless Cheetah

There were lots of pelicans, and they're huge. The white feathers meant I had to drop ISO settings every time I tried to photograph these or other white birds. It's easy to blow those white feathers out and lose all detail.

Pelicans are Huge

There must have been a hundred flamingos, and it was really hard to shoot them in the dim light. They wouldn't sit still; and they crowded together.

Managed to Isolate One of the Many Flamingos

This stork posed in one of the walk-through bird enclosures. It actually flew up to a perch and sat there looking at people walking through, no skittishness in this one. The dark feathers and dim light meant I really had to bump the ISO up.

Abdim's Stork

In the bird enclosures it was sometimes possible to capture images of the birds at the feeders. They're pretty messy.

Got Food?

Cape Starling

For a small fee, visitors could hand-feed giraffes. This one was munching on a large green leaf.

Giraffe Eating

These guys are huge; second largest bird species in the world.

Southern Cassowary

In one of the several bird enclosures that we could walk into, the birds cooperated by sitting still as people fed them. Darkness meant I was shooting these colorful birds wide open, with the background and even some of the bird's body completely blurred.

Messy Eater: Rainbow Lorikeet

Among the many birds, there were some that did not belong to the zoo. This green heron was eating the free zoo food.

Green Heron

If you look closely, the streaks of rain are visible around the heron's beak. The wattled crane was another white bird that forced me to drop ISO. This is a huge, ugly bird.

Wattled Crane

Is this guy's name Pumbaa?

Warthog

Zebra