Day 25 (The Zoo)

Elise and I visited Irvine Regional Park today, home of the world-renown, galaxy famous Orange County Zoo. I took a lot of pictures, a lot.  With their wide variety of animals there I had to adjust to a myriad of settings on the fly.  I used the zoom lens for all of the animal shots.  One of the bigger challenges was the fences in the way.  It was hard to get shots in focus; however, about halfway through I remembered/figured out how to use manual focus.  I had a lot of fun using that and snapping the pictures.  I attempted to narrow down to one picture of each animal but couldn't always.  I also included some shots of Elise and self-timer shots of both of us at the end with the 55 mm lens.

Bobcats- I had some nice shots of them cleaning themselves but then one of them went to clean the other and they played around.

Coyote

Ocelot- I don't think the pictures even manage to capture how beautiful the coat of the ocelot looks.  I got a nice action shot of it and one of it through the bushes waiting for its feeding.

Mountain Lion - she was in the back of her enclosure so I couldn't get a good one of her.

Collared Peccary - got a nice picture of two them nibbling at the bush and something on the ground.

Black Bear - we got to see them feeding the black bear but most of those shots had the zookeeper in them. Here is one of the large one sitting and one with Elise and the bear in the background.

Beaver - I guess we got lucky with our timing, almost all of the animals were active in some capacity.  Caught some shots of the beaver swimming and then diving underwater.

Bald Eagle - my favorite animal and the National Bird of the United States.  The top shot captures the eagle in a pensive stage.  In the middle one I got a nice shot of the bird's nobility.  I had Elise snap one of me with the eagle in the background.

Peacock - if you have been to the Orange County Zoo then you know that peacocks aren't enclosed there.  They just live there.  I captured some fun shots of one of them strutting his stuff on top of an enclosure.

Raccoon

Coati

Golden Eagle - This is my favorite animal shot of the day (my favorite shot of the day is coming later).  The eagle was sitting erect just before this.  I'm not sure but I believe he looks poised to take off in flight (although in his cage he can't really fly).

Hawk - the zoo has two hawks.  At different moments while we were standing there each hawk spread its wings to hop around.  I got pictures of both of them, but one came out too dark and the other was blurry.

Beautiful Lady - after leaving the zoo we walked over to one of the ponds at the park.  I saw some roots on the ground and thought it would be fun to frame Elise in them.  This is my first attempt at people photography.  The top one I focused on the roots and the bottom one Elise.

Self-timer shots - we sat on a bench to enjoy the scenery.  Since we had brought our tripod I decided to set up some self-timer shots of us from behind.  To position the camera I had to lie on the mulch but they came out nice.  We did three: one looking away, one looking towards the camera and one kissing.  After the first shot I went to set up the second one and instead of going behind the camera and getting dirty I just bent over the front.  Elise turned around and got a great view of my butt.  I decided to snap some shots of her laughing to catch a natural smile.  That photo (#2 below) is my favorite of the day.

Ducks - I took this shot while we were walking and like the way the sun sparkles off of the water among the ducks.