Sunday, 18 January 2009

Another day at the zoo!

This time, in -1 degree weather! It's the coldest zoo day I've ever had! I had picked up a friend from work, his wife and their 15 month old son first thing. As they don't drive and I was going anyway, I thought it was nice to ask them along!

Steve & Leon

Since I had a child in the car, I didn't go over 60mph the whole way there, so a normal 1 hour (max) journey took me close to 90 minutes! Ah well, the important thing is that we got there safely!

Marmot

Anyway, the zoo was so quiet so we went in straight away & met one of my friends cousins there. We wandered round to see the elephants, the bat house and a few other animals and then we settled for our picnic! We sat outside eating our food and it was just so cold! We had to then rush to the cafe to get a hot drink! Heh!

Elephants Playing

We then spent a while wandering round leisurely letting Leon (the 15 month old) walk himself. We saw the elephants again, the littler monkeys, the caotis and some others.

Penguins

The zoo has a new butterfly enclosure located behind the condors and next to the caotis but before the cattle and giraffes. My camera was steaming up something terrible, so the one photograph I got was blurry! Ugh! As we were in the butterfly house and walking through admiring all of the beautiful colours, I spotted a blue butterfly on the ground struggling to fly. Its wing looked damaged, but I thought that because of the humidity and the fact that a bit of water had gathered on the floor, it was just stuck and would walk onto the tree bark and dry off. Anyway, that butterfly died =o( Only took like 5 seconds. But the keeper scooped it up.

Monkey & Baby 2

Next stop was to see the jaguars, but they were sleeping so we didn't catch sight of them unfortunately. Nor did we see the tigers who were our next stop. Our last big enclosure of the day was the lions. I had talked the whole way about photographing Chakra (the new lion cub) so I was really excited.

Bird

As we approached the lion enclosure, there was a sign saying that Chakra had to be euthanized on Friday January 9th due to a developmental disorder. I was just gutted...Asha (Chakras Mum) was nowhere to be seen, and Asoca (Chakras Dad) just looked really sad lying down. Poor things. I got all choked up and we didn't stay there long.

Lion

On our way back to the exit, we went to see the frog exhibit, which is another new one. We also saw the komodo dragons and tropical things and finally the reptile house. We also dropped by the chimp enclosure, but we only saw a lot of chimp bottoms as they were in the back being fed by the keepers. The Orangs and gibbons were also out of sight - they must have been sleeping!

Dragon 2

All in all, it was a good day despite a lot of animals not being out and the weather being atrocious! I learnt how to take macro photos with my camera, and finally got the hang of photographing through glass, so it was a bit of a learning curve for me! And since Leon had walked around almost the whole day (impressive) he slept all the way home and didn't even wake up when we carried him inside! It was a peaceful drive home!

Beetles

Reptile close-up

Elephant
Now this final photograph I took is of my friends 15 month old son. The light was terrible as it had started going dark, and I wasn't able to take the picture properly with a wiggling 15 month old trying to climb of the tortiose statue! Anyway, it's his wifes birthday soon, and I was thinking about enlarging the photograph (I like his smile on it), even though I know it's not really that sharp...What do you think? Would you be happy receiving it large & in a frame as a gift? Also, any photoshop pro's that read this - Can I make it any sharper? I'm thinking his facial features don't stand out that much...
Leon

4 comments:

jayneH said...

I think i would be very pleased to receive a large photograph in a frame that you have done your pictures are beautiful as always, i love reading your blog and looking at your pics,
love jayne x

clairemiddleton said...

Thank you, Jayne! x

Becky Fyfe said...

I think it's a great picture. Use the unsharp mask tool in "effects" (I think) to adjust the sharpness. In the size you have it in yourblog, it looks sharp. I think she'd love the gift!

clairemiddleton said...

Hi Becky - Do I need to do a layer and then run the unsharp mask?

I showed her a thumbnail of the pic and she likes it - so I'll blow it up for her...I don't think it's too soft with the focussing now I've looked and looked and looked at it - I guess it's fine for now but I will do some editing before printing.

Thanks for the tip about the unsharp mask, I've never seen that tool before =o)