Going into the Wild...

[Benjamin]

<span style="font-size: medium;"]Just finished my California trip and got back with some pictures from San Diego Wild Animal Park. I have barely been to any zoo in the most recent decade, most of my trip to zoos happened when I was a little child and I no longer remember any of them at all. But this time though, I do think that the San Diego zoos are fantastic!


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<span style="font-size: medium;"]50D + 70-200/4L IS @ 200mm, f/5.6, 1/800s, ISO100


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<span style="font-size: medium;"][img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.24.70.My+Gallery/Wild-Animal-Park-2009-_2800_2_2900_.JPG[/img]


<span style="font-size: medium;"]50D + 70-200/4L IS @ 93mm, f/6.3, 1/400s, ISO100





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<span style="font-size: medium;"]50D + 70-200/4L IS @ 200mm, f/8.0, 1/500s, ISO100





<span style="font-size: medium;"]Comments are welcome!



<span style="font-size: medium;"]Ben

[mpphoto12]

The second or third are best but the first one just is sooo obvious your trying to incorporate rule of thirds and to be honest im not really feeling the black and white. I like the second one best however and i do like just that one in black and white. Try them in color or maybe getting closer to the animal to show more emotion. Nice work

[crosbyharbison]

cool photos, I took a bunch of photos in san diego recently and went pretty much everywhere except there.

[Oren]

To be honest, wildlife pictures should be in color - please post again the color versions.

[Colin]

I really liked taking the giraffe feeding tour. You get to go in with the animals inside the enclosures. There's a Rhino one too, though the youngest was too young.


Nice pictures!

[Benjamin]

Thanks all for your kind words! Very appreciated!

To be honest, wildlife pictures should be in color - please post again the color versions.
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Here are the color ones:


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Do you think the color ones are better than the B&amp;W ones in this case. Frankly I disagree with "wildlife pictures should be in color"; by disagree I'm by no means saying the other way around, my point is that we should choose whichever works the best. I'm sure there're nice B&amp;W wildlife pictures around.


I turn my pictures into B&amp;W when I feel that the color does not contribute to the theme or content; or the color is very bland. In this case all the two colors present are just some green grass with mostly reddish soil, it's boring in my opinion. I therefore turn them into B&amp;W and think that I didn't lose anything.


Hopefully that makes sense.

[wickerprints]

The color versions are still better than the b/w in my view.


Here's the thing: you are too far above your subject, and too far away. Even if you had a longer focal length, you would still be looking down, which means you won't get a lot of figure/ground separation. The animals have the coloration they do in order to provide camouflage from predators.


Unfortunately, you're stuck in a bad position and you're trying to make the most of it through creative composition. You can't control the lighting, subject distance, color, or vantage point. All of these things are chosen for you as you are riding around on a guided tour. The result is a series of images that, while respectable, end up rather flat. Color is one of the few visual cues in the images that allows some kind of contrast between the animals and the ground.


In summary, my position is that if the view of the ground is not sufficiently interesting in its own right, it should not be given such prominence in the photo.

[Oren]

In this case all the two colors present are just some green grass with mostly reddish soil, it's boring in my opinion. I therefore turn them into B&amp;W and think that I didn't lose anything.


Hopefully that makes sense.
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Actually, after seeing the color version, I have to agree.

[Benjamin]

In summary, my position is that if the view of the ground is not sufficiently interesting in its own right, it should not be given such prominence in the photo.
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True.


On the guided tour it's no way to get close to the animals or to freely choose an angle to shoot.


However, shooting down using the ground as the background sometime will work great according to my experience, especially when the ambient environment is distracting. The ground on the contrary is always relatively clean and uniform.


In my case I just got a bad angle with a boring ground...[:S]