Possibly the worlds most awesome animal

[tq-g]

I haven't done any photography for a few months. Sold my old Nikon D90 and waited for the nasty winter to pass(I hate winter). Now that it's finally beginning to get habitable again i've been out exercising my new D7000 with a Nikon 50mm 1.2 AI-S and a Tokina 100mm macro. Now these shots are from a little trip to the zoo where I found the worlds most awesome animal. Possibly.

[Tony Jay]

Lovely portraits of wonderful animals

The second image in particular has massive potential.
First glance would have one believing that this a B&W image.
Second glance at the eyes tells one different.
The black background is very effective.

Just the cropping - this image is a true winner - once the cropping is sorted.

Keep shooting - you seemed to have got a real buzz from capturing these lemurs.

Regards

Tony Jay

[tq-g]

Thanks for the kind words Tony!

I'm also very pleased with how the second image turned out. The funny thing is that it's very much thanks to the difficult conditions. It was just a bright sunny day, though it was a few hours past noon. But with a large aperture, fast shutter speed and the background in shadow it worked very well. I just did some minor tweaking afterwards; adjusted white-balance, slightly increased vibrance and cleaned up some artifacts in the background.

I've thought about the cropping, but I find it sort of kills the image if cut off some of the black. The black void sort of adds to the expression I think. However, i'm considering making a print and framing the image. A more square crop with the right framing would probably work well there.

The first image is something i'm working on still. I think it got a little over-sharpened. Got a little excited about the detail I could get with D7K and the 50mm on a smaller aperture(I have mostly used the 50mm wide open, but it gets seriously sharp at smaller apertures). Probably should back off on the sharpening a step or two, work on the contrast curve and see what I can do with dodging and burning.

[tq-g]

I actually had quite an awful day at the zoo. It was one of those days where you got the first taste of the summers heat. That part I love. The problem is everyone else loves it too. To get where I was going I had to walk a couple of miles through Stockholm. The traffic wasn't working, so it was more like a wrestling match all the way through the city, in a gazing sun.

Finally there, it was like an inferno of screaming children, and their incredibly annoying parents. I had to walk through this hell while the animals where hiding some place else.

Seeing the lemurs was completely worth it though. If you've seen the movie Madagascar they captured their personality perfectly. They are little clever, mercurial, creatures that seemed to love attention. The ones in my first shot stood at a platform in a stone wall, and looked like they were playing some sort of theater for the audience. They also seemed incredibly sociable. One of them even tried to taste my camera.

Shooting animals seems like alot of fun though. I think I should invest in a good tele-lense and a trip some place where you get to see interesting, wild, animals.

[AWeil]

Yes, they are amazing animals. You captured some very fine images of them.
Recently, I had the opportunity to observe a small family in a Zoo. Indeed, the little one was ready to leave the enclosure to investigate me.