SIMPLIFY & ISOLATE For Amazing Pictures

Simplify the composition and isolate the subject. It may take some effort to do this, but at a zoo, you do have more control over the situation than you generally do with a wild animal. That’s why the hosts on Animal Photography usually hold photos of pets, domestic animals, and zoo animals to a higher standard than wild animals. That’s not to say it’s going to be simple or fast. That is why you’re camping out in front of a habitat.

To SIMPLIFY THE COMPOSITION, wait for the animal to get away from any distracting elements – the fake zoo habitat, rocks, tree limbs, fences, bars, etc. No limbs or rocks or other components cutting across the animal. No other elements within the photo that distract the eye from the topic. For a wild animal, you might wish to include elements from the natural habitat within the photo, but not in a zoo photo (unless it is an exceptional zoo habitat)

If you’re using a sufficiently long lens, you can zoom in for a tight crop, doing either a portrait or a frame-filling image and exclude as much of the habitat as possible. Do not be afraid to get in close (well, not physically) using the lens.

To ISOLATE THE Topic, you've several choices. Most zoo animals (and wild ones too) tend to behave in predictable ways. The more confined the environment, the a lot more predictable the behavior can be. If you've an idea about the route the animal takes, use that knowledge to your benefit. Stake out a great spot using the best light and the best angle, get some catch light in the animals’ eyes, isolate it from the fake zoo habitat, and get a excellent shot.

Use depth of field (DOF) for your advantage. The wider the aperture of your lens, the shallower the DOF will be. That way, you can keep the eyes and face in sharp focus, let the body of the animal fall out of focus, and hopefully you can totally blur the background. The faster the lens you use, the much better you’ll be able to control DOF.

Typical settings: When walking from enclosure to enclosure, I kick over to to shutter priority mode and set my shutter to 640 or so... that way I can catch anything I see fast. I generally run my D300 at 800 ISO even on sunny days and 400 ISO on our D80 and D40. Honestly, only a pixel peeper can tell the difference between those settings and the 200 ISO on those cameras, so why not give yourself a bit of range?