PHOENIX ZOO

On Tuesday, March 6, Geri and I went to the Phoenix Zoo.  I have had difficulty in the past in trying to photograph living animals, as I am slow in composing and focusing the shot and the animal seem to have a tendency of moving just before I release the shutter.  In addition, there is often opportunity for optical interference between me and the subject animal in the form of glass or wire or just plain distance.  To some extent that was true on this visit, although I will say that I think I am getting better.

The zoo did not appear to include any African elephants, though it did have at least one Indian elephant . . .

which had freckles!

The zoo also had a beautiful leopard.  Unfortunately, it was behind a wire enclosure.  Moreover, the animal was continually pacing, and I just could not seem to get all of it in any one shot.  Here is the best of those that I took.

Here are a few more large mammals that one would expect for a zoo of this size.

I found myself focusing on just parts of these animals, I guess in the belief that it would be more interesting to show just those aspects that distinguish that animal from others--including the rhino's ears.

The zoo also sported some gerenuks, which seemed to be a cross between an antelope and a giraffe.  Not sure I had ever seen one before.  (Sort of looked like one of those annoying creatures in one of the Star Wars movies.)

The zoo also offered camel rides.  We weren't interested, although this one seemed better behaved than most.

There was also the usual staple of reptiles.

I wish the tortoise had not been in the middle of lunch when we stopped by (bok choy, I believe).  Also, I would have liked to emphasize the ridges in the tortoise's shell, but that would have required that I be directly above it--not possible.

This lizard was being held by a zoo trainer, and I wanted to catch it with its tongue sticking out.

I did better with birds this time around.  Here is a flock of so-so looking flamingos.

Not great; however, they were in an enclosure with a large variety of other animals and there was a lot of inter-species activity.  When I took this shot, all of the flamingos seemed to be looking in the same direction, perhaps hoping for a little action.

I had good luck with some pelicans.  Unfortunately, most of these specimens had some sort of fleshy flanges on their beaks that looked like they had  been mutilated.  Here are a couple.  Pretty unattractive.

As a result, I wound up shooting only a portion of their heads.  But here I did have some success in getting some clear shots.

Also I caught a parrot and some sort of duck.

Not bad.

There was also a large flock of nearly-white flamingos that we could get quite close to.  The problem here was that they seemed to be taking their afternoon naps and most of the time just tucked their heads into the feathers in their backs.

Occasionally, though, they would pull their heads out, and I would take that opportunity to get a shot, as in the following.

But the real prima donnas were the baboons.  In addition to the photo at the beginning of this post, I got the following.

One wonders who does her hair.

I took these shots with my telephoto at a wide-open aperture of f/5.6 to minimize any background distractions.  This last shot was cropped a bit too much, but generally I am still quite happy with it.

DESERT BOTANICAL GARDEN

Phoenix boasts a great botanical garden, which I have already visited twice during our stay in Arizona, once with Geri and once more on my own, with camera and tripod.  Since we joined Friends of the Domes in Milwaukee, we have visitor privileges at the Arizona facility also, and it is only about 10 minutes from our apartment in Scottsdale.  The Garden includes about 50 acres of grounds featuring desert flora.  There were always a number of others there also taking advantage of the photo opportunities.

Typically, I found myself taking "abstracts," including the one above as well as the following.

This caught my eye because of the white strings that were curling off of the edges of the spiky leaves.  This shot was taken at an aperture of f/36 to maximize depth of field.  However, I also took another shot with a wide open aperture of f/3.2.

Now only the few strands closest to the lens were in focus.  I turned this shot into a B&W, which seems to work better as an abstract.

The best shot would probably be something in between the two extremes in terms of depth of field.

It is almost always sunny in Phoenix, and I tried to take advantage of that sun to capture backlit scenes, such as in the following.

I would have liked to have darkened entirely the space above the cactus in the latter shot, if I could have.

Here are a few more "abstracts" where I thought the sunlight helped the shots.

I liked the colors in this last shot, but I wish I could have excluded the white material in the lower part of the photo.

The sun didn't always help, as in the following shot where I thought the shadows were a bit of a distraction from the texture and shape of the plant.

The plant was five-sided and about three inches across, and I think it would have been best to have included all of the plant rather than cutting off some of its corners.  However, the plant was wedged up against others, and it was not possible to capture all of the plant without incorporating parts of others, so I chose to isolate it as above.  The definition on this shot was really quite good.

Not all of the shots were macros.  Following are a couple involving "larger" scenes.

This saguaro cactus was probably 50 feet high.  I intentionally included the sun in the shot.  Not great.  If I try this again, I will work to get a shot that does not include anything else in the lower part of the image.  Also, it would probably be better to have more than one object in the frame.

Here is another shot of cacti that I turned into an abstract of sorts by cropping out everything but the ribbing of the cactus plants.

This shot also has very good resolution.  It was taken handheld with my standard 24-120 mm zoom at f/22 for 1/50 second.  Here, I think the shadows created by the sunlight helped to accentuate the cacti's ribbing.  There is a little sky visible between the cacti in the upper portion of the image, but I didn't think it distracted from the shot in this case.

March is a time when the desert starts to bloom, and there were a lot of opportunities for floral shots in the garden.  A lot of the other visitors with cameras seemed to be focusing on those blooms.  Here are a couple that I took.

This was a very long, narrow flower and I could have captured all of it.  However, what caught my attention was the fact that the blossoms at the base were spreading out, while those further up were still tight against the central stem.  I took this at a fairly open aperture of f/5 to eliminate any clutter behind the plant.  The flower itself is in very good focus.

Here is another shot of a flower that was enjoying the full sunlight.

I wound up taking this photo as a fairly tight shot to eliminate some distracting elements that were encroaching on the flower.  Even though this shot is in very good focus, in the end I was not satisfied with it for a couple of reasons.  First, I would have liked to have been able to darken all of the background, but there is a light background element in the upper left center behind the flower as well as in the lower left that I could not get rid of.  Second, the center of the flower has some light colored, dead (or at least defective) aspects.  So I cropped the shot down to just the right side and rotated it as follows.

What remains is in very good focus and has a black background.  I left some of the "dead" center portion rather than to crop it any more tightly.

I also found myself attracted to the spikes characteristic of desert flora, as in the following abstracts.

In the second shot the spikes were on one plant positioned in front of a second and the plant was being backlit by the sun.  I'm not sure of the source of the "shadow" spikes visible in the upper portion of the shot.  The spikes actually ran vertically in the original shot and I simply rotated the photo 90 degrees clockwise.

Finally, I noticed a cactus with very stiff (as in darning needles), curved spines that were multi-colored and being backlit by the sun.  Here is a shot taken at a very narrow aperture of f/45.

Although a lot of the spikes are in good focus, I felt the spikes at the base of the image were distracting.  There is also a bit of clutter in the background.  Here is another shot taken at a nearly wide-open aperture of f/4.5.

Now only three of the spikes are in any sort of focus, and only one of them (in the lower left) is truly in good focus.  I like this shot better than the first one, though I think the best shot as an abstract would have been at some aperture somewhere in between the two.  Next time.

TRIP WEST

My wife and I decided to spend the month of March in Arizona and chose to drive out rather to fly.  I had thought that if I saw something during the drive I would stop to take some shots.  For the most part, that didn't happen.  Even though I saw a number of possible shots, I just didn't feel that I should take the time to try to get some photos.  However, there were a couple of times when I did pull out my camera.

The first came when we stopped for lunch in McLean, Texas, a little town out on the flat plains of the Texas panhandle.  The only place we found to eat in the town was the Red River Steakhouse. which proved to be an authentic "western" establishment.  What initially caught my attention were the walls covered with license plates.

Note the Wisconsin plate in the upper center of the first photo (KBEEF55).

The outside was interesting also.

Including the following signs.

A second opportunity was an auto museum in Santa Rosa NM, where we spent our second night on the road.  I spotted the museum as we were driving back from dinner.  It was close to sunset and the light was diminishing, so I hurried back with my camera to get whatever I could.  There were perhaps 8-10 vintage cars parked out front and the museum signs promised more than 30 cars inside.

The museum was closed for the day--perhaps a good thing considering the shape the cars outside were in.  Although the yellow cab was actually in pretty good shape . . .

the rest were in very bad shape and had obviously undergone no restoration.

That's our Outback behind the Edsel.

On the third day we stopped at a "rest area" that consisted of a string of outbuildings that served as restrooms and that were just one step above port-a-potties.  In any event, the rest area was across from the stark landscape of the western plains that was lit by the early morning sunlight.

We had been looking at a very horizontal landscape for the last day.  So I decided the best way to to handle these shots was to crop the shot horizontally.  Here is a second shot that I cropped even more horizontally.

Finally, here are a couple of shots I took from the balcony of our apartment in Scottsdale, reflecting the faux spanish architecture . . .

including the play of shadows across the stucco of the simple walls.

I turned this last shot into a black & white to accentuate the shadows.