These are the Three Biggest Challenges in Zoo Photography and Overcome them.

A trip to the Zoo is a rare opportunity to capture exotic animals up close for many people. A Zoo can be a challenging environment to photograph. Zoo photography has been covered before. Let’s now focus on the main challenges and explore overcoming them. Landscape photography lets you be outdoors, amid amazing nature, and create images that will last a lifetime. As a landscape photographer, you will have to face many challenges. Some challenges are directly related to the natural world around you. Others relate to how you capture your images.

Fences and Wire – You will likely be photographing in a city Zoo. This means that most of the animals will be behind wire fencing. Wire fences can be very ugly objects that obscure an animal’s view. You will want to reduce their visual impact. This can be done in two ways.

• Place your lens between the wires by getting close enough to the fence. This might not be possible for those with larger lenses, but it is possible to fit many lenses between chicken wire fence wires. Keep in mind that certain animals can be territorial, so that you might get bitten or worsened by this.
• You can widen your aperture – By setting the aperture to wider, you can often photograph straight through wire fencing, and it will not appear in the final image. While you will need to focus on the animal because of the very narrow depth-of-field, it is unnecessary. A setting of around 2.8 will reduce the likelihood of it appearing. Try shooting in a place where you cannot see the wire. The bright wire will not impact the final image if it isn’t in direct sunlight. This applies even if you are shooting wide open.

Through Glass

Another common situation in modern zoos is when you shoot through the thick glass into an animal complex. This creates all kinds of problems with reflections onto the glass and your final shot. Wrap some material around your lens’ front and lean against it. You can wear a t-shirt or another similar material. Be careful not to let the material get in front of your lens. Instead, use it to shade out any unwanted reflections. It’s not the most advanced technology, but it works.

Manmade Objects 

You can’t escape the fact you’re shooting in a manufactured environment. This creates some visual elements in animal shots that many photographers don’t want. If you’ve moved around enough to look for angles that don’t expose those objects (which you should), there is only one solution.

Post-processing can be used to remove these objects. You can remove the ugly elements from your image using the Photoshop or GIMP clone tool. Although it is not the best solution, sometimes it is all we have. As shown in the above shot, you can also use cropping to focus on the animal.

Remember that shooting at the Zoo should always be enjoyable. If you are not having fun, you’re probably doing something wrong. Photographers can have a lot of fun if they plan and take home some great shots.