Craig's Blog

One of the things that I have really taken an interest in with my photography is taking pictures of people. When Michelle gave me my first Digital SLR a couple years ago I had planned on taking pictures of the outdoors: landscapes, animals and also doing some macro photography. After taking the Digital Photography 101 and Studio Lighting 101 workshops at Snapfactory and seeing the pictures that other students were taking of people I began to realize that there is something about capturing photographs of people that really resonates with me. The trip to the Wildlife World Zoo gave me the opportunity to focus a lot of my shooting on Brad and Stephanie’s son Tyler as he experienced the zoo. Here are some of my favorite shots of Tyler taken during our visit to the zoo.

Stephanie & Tyler feeding a parrot

Tyler always seemed to have a pretty good idea where the camera was at.

I really like Tyler’s expression in these shots

My personal favorite

You might have noticed some grain in the images due to shooting with a higher ISO setting to keep the shutter speed fast enough for the lens that I was using throughout the day (70–200mm 2.8 with 1.4x extender). While I probably should have removed the extender for these images I was shooting the wildlife and watching Tyler throughout the day and didn’t want to keep switching back in forth. All things considered, I was pleased with the results.

I head to Europe for two weeks in February and I will definitely be posting shots from the trip. My hope is to post at least one blog update while there and if that doesn’t work out I am sure to have multiple updates here when I return.

Michelle and I have talked about visiting the Wildlife World Zoo in Litchfield Park, AZ for a while and a couple weekends ago we finally had an opportunity to make it out there. We were joined by our friends Brad, Stephanie and their son Tyler along with our Uncle Rich and niece Ashley. We had a great time at the zoo – here are some of my favorite pictures of the animals we encountered at the zoo. All of these pictures were taken with my 70–200 2.8L and the 1.4x EF Extender.

This parrot was hanging out at the entrance to the zoo:

Antelope that we encountered while riding the train around that takes you around the zoo

This picture was taken in the area where you can buy some food to feed the giraffes. I watched as people fed them and snapped several photos. I like this one the best – lucky shot

Here is a picture of a meerkat that seemed totally fine posing for the camera

The reptile habitat at the zoo was indoors and there was very little lighting available. I cranked the ISO all the way up to 3200 and really enjoyed the results considering the conditions.

I will be posting Part II from the excursion soon that will highlight the photographs of Tyler as he experienced the surroundings at the zoo. I’m also working on finalizing the setup of SlideShowPro so that I can create online slideshows of photographs and expand the images available there instead of trying to add them all to blog posts.

I hope that everyone is doing well!