For Thanksgiving I went to the zoo. I was on my own, which was my choice, and they were having a thing where kids could feed the animals at the petting zoo type area, which I'd never been to at all. So I checked that out, and then quickly left because the place was crammed with people, and the reason I was on my own for Thanksgiving was that I wanted to be away from large groups of people. All in all, I have to say I'm thrilled with what I got in terms of pictures. Only two really oustanding subjects, but after as many trips as I've made even one new accomplishment is noteworthy for me. In particular I got the Clouded Leopard! You have to understand, their clouded leopards are kept in a very dark enclosure, because they're nocturnal, and even then most of the time I never even see them because they're rather shy. This was maybe the third or forth time I've ever seen one, and the second time I got them on camera at all, although the previous time was so blurred due to hand holding that it was only a novelty for me. So this time I swore I was going to get a good shot. I broke out the mini tripod, which didn't fit on the railing at all. But by laying one leg of the tripod flat against the railing, and having the other two straddle it, I could press down on the flat leg and sort of clamp it down with my hands. A remote shutter release coupled with mirror lockup completed the preperations, and all that was left to do was hold my breath a lot and hope that at least one of the crude shots worked out. The problem is that I had no way to focus. It was too dark to visually judge the sharpness of the image through the viewfinder, and it was WAY too dark for autofocus to manage. All I could do was give it my best guess, which is not too bad because I'm pretty good at judging the focus point by feeling out the edges of where the image starts getting blurry, and estimating the center between those points instead of actually looking for the sharpest image. It's a holdover from my darkroom processing days, I used a similar method to focus the projector. I never focused quite right on the face of the leopard, most of my shots were focused on the body farther back. But oddly enough one of my best shots was one before I broke out the tripod, I took it by just resting the camera on the railing and using my hand to brace it to the right angle. I used a much higher ISO, but still, I'm always pleased when I pull off an impromptu bracing job like that. They're not great shots, the point is that I got them at all, and they look vaguely normal despite how dark it was and how hard I had to work to get them. I think I really need to get a tripod now, that's really the next step on my mission to get this leopard, but I'm really torn on what sort of tripod to go after. The travel ones all have fairly restrictive weight limits, especially since I'm using a 70-200 to get the shot, and the bigger ones are, well, bigger. Also I got a shot of a chameleon which I'd never captured before, it's perhaps my favorite of all their lizards. The one in the picture is a male, the female is larger but less brightly colored. And then I've got a picture of a grey goose which I'd never even seen before, because I'd never visited this part of the zoo because it's a children's area that used to cost extra, and I'm a cheapskate. And then another picture of that lion that I have to swear is alive and well. For some reason he tends to lie in postures such as this. And I can never pass him up when he does it. I'm ready for you, Animal Kingdom!
