Lemme get out of the way first. Two way, 6 hours of train travel in a day is horribly mind numbing! Granted I had more than that on my way up to Scotland, however that little journey I had distractions with me. This time round, I *thought* I had the newspaper with me. Sadly, it'd been left behind the last night when I packed. If not, the journey was straightforward, from London Bridge railway directly to Sandwich in Kent. The return journey was in reverse, but the engineering works sign at the station had me mightily worried about how to get back home in time to do the laundry!!!
I had grandiose plans for visiting the
RSCC - being so far away I thought it would be nice to do it as a two day weekend get away, and the train rides won't be too bad. Not going to happen with work getting busy. However, I read news about the New Guinea Singing Dogs having puppies... *had* to get some shots in.
The observation platform was similar to cleland, just on a smaller scale - so it's quite familiar territory, shooting downwards. I spent *alot* of my time there, just observing the dogs, and also saw one puppy peak out of their kennel just ONCE, before I had a chance to bring the camera up, it was back in. Darn. The above shot has the male mouthing the female in the muzzle.
Seconds later they were up being the friendly dogs they are.
The sunlight was *harsh* for the most of the day. The first few pictures are evident of that. Now being on a platform above, I blocked the furball with my own shadow to take the picture above. Helps with the contrast levels, though the picture could be better.
Can I haz noms? (slightly cropped)
Ok enough with the dogs. I have too many shots of them. Other critters there were several species of Lemurs. I arrived just before 11am and saw all of them out and about. I thought hey, I'd go around the entire center once to get a grip of the place, then come back again. BAD idea. Only this particular species above was out and about, the other two species were either in their pen, or conditions were tough to take the shot. The fencing here was silver, my worse nightmare in hard sunlit conditions.
The fishing cats portrayed here (I had them confused with the ocelots and pallas cats. I'm horrible at critter id.) were shot using the 300/4 + TC14EII combo, in order to fully crop in. I'm not sure why but the current area they have was mostly covered by a tarp of some sorts. There was also enclosure working going on besides them, perhaps they are waiting for a new place?
They're not too photo-shy though :) There is a pair there, one dozing away and another that was fine with me shooting it :)
Must nom photog!
Herr sleepyhead portrayed above was in pretty harsh light, had to wait for the sun to go behind a cloud, and even then, still pretty contrasty!
Went back to grab more NGSD shots.
FOOOOSA! I'm not sure if there were one or two foosa there, there seem to be two enclosures, connected perhaps? Anyways. The sun in the current season is always behind the enclosure, so the furball is permanently backlit. Also, it is a glass enclosure. Double whammy. Still, the 16-85 does pretty admirably in this condition.
Check out the rim lighting.
A little bit of flare, but so long as it's shot straight on, no issues. I would like to mention that I was also wearing a black jacket, and with me close to the glass, it helped block out alot of the reflections. I had tried using the 70-200 and standing a little further, but that proved to be futile with reflections of the background all over.
Here's a hundred percent crop of the shot. No noise reduction or sharpening tricks. Pretty alright for a shot through glass imo.
Here's mom in the kennel. No puppies so went around again.
My first time seeing an Aardwolf. These were placed in an enclosure directly besides the NGSDs. 3 little critters, all female. Tough to shoot the way I want, but I did get a few keepers.
Sand cats! These are the epitome of cute. Seriously. Ok, perhaps the puppies would be evenly matched. Or not. In anycase, the cats and many other critters were housed in an indoor enclosure. Can't really get close to them, but the 70-200 or 300/4 were sufficient to get rid of the background plus go through the wires.
F4/100, ISO1600, SB600 + Flash Extender
This little furball had sort of a pattern to its movement, and seemed to enjoying hanging out one one of the branches in its enclosure. Luckily, there was a fence, and I was able to lock down all the monopod controls, and brance it against the fence, so I had sort of a tripod.
I'm telling ya. Lady luck shines on those who set out to get photos of NGSD puppies :) The above is a 100% crop. This time, as it's iso1600 I dumped in the default noise ninja. It actually doesn't look too bad without NR.
Crowned Pigeons
The crowned pigeons were a sight to behold. They are BIG. As in. Bigger than some chickens. Beautiful critters truly. These guys were shot with flash in use, but as I was indoors, I bounced the flash at a slight angle upwards. The light was reflected among the many trees and I thought it worked well.
Here's a 100% crop showing iso 1600 without noise reduction. The exposure was ISO 1600, F3.2/80 - with the 70-200VR. Truly, VR works wonders. I'd also slightly mis-focused a few mms to the front. Sadly. Also, the lens was at 3.2 and is still quite soft.
Outdoors, there is a whole bunch of flamingoes. The sun was pretty crap for the most day, but just as I was leaving, it was quite soft, and thought to get one of the curled up furballs as a sort of abstract. This shot may actually be a total failure, as while the eye area is quite sharp, there is not enough depth of field to get all the foreground plumage in focus. Live and learn...
Dad and pup
Last shot :) I stayed around till late, and the keepers came to weigh the puppies and I managed a few shots.
There are also tons of other critters, such as Gibbons, Snow Leopards (urgh, the glass window there is killer), Sun bears, Ocelots, a horn bill (beautiful big bird! Unable to get a decent shot though), cougars, bats, civets, binturongs, tapir, and so many more.
It's amazing the amount of critters to be had there, wish I had a faster medium zoom though - the 17-55/2.8 would be awesome indoors. It's not a lens I will use often either so....
Well in closing, I'd like to say that the cafe also makes a very good ham and cheese panini, and if I ever needed to buy chairs for people to sit on, the kind of chairs in the cafe would be my first choice.
Ta!
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