The more time I spend photographing wildlife the more I am enjoying it – what started out as a bit of an experiment to see what sort of wildlife photographs I could make as a precursor to a possible African safari next year is slowly turning into a type and style of photography that I will be actively seeking out far more often.  There is definitely an African safari in my photographic future!. The Lion enclosure at Werribee Open Range Zoo is about as close as one can get to an African Safari without leaving Australia. Its a wonderful location for wildlife photography – and you don’t need super exotic glass to get great shots. You can get really quite close to many of the animals; especially if you book onto the open top safari drive (and I recommend that you do). All of the enclosures are open range in nature; giving the animals real room to move and roam in an environment far closer to their natural world than most zoo cages. As a result the animals tend to be more active, more alert and make far better photographic subjects.

For this photograph I used the 300mm F2.8L IS lens (my favourite telephoto lens for Wildlife) and lay on the ground in order to get a different perspective to the average lion shot. By lying on the ground at the Lions level I was better able to capture the lovely cross light from the late afternoon Autumn sun. I really like this photograph as its clearly a decisive moment in time – the Lioness on the prowl with a keen eyed glare and a purposeful stride.

This is definitely an ‘Awwww…. isn’t that cute’ photograph; but I just couldn’t help myself – Sumatran Tiger cubs are too cute! And the opportunity to photograph a couple of these endangered Tiger cubs doesn’t present itself very often. For the record these cubs were born in captivity at the Melbourne Zoo a few weeks ago.This was quite a tough photograph to make. I was at ISO800 wide open on the 300mm F2.8L IS with a shutter speed of 1/100th of a second. I shot half a dozen frames on motor drive and this was the only one where the cubs stopped moving and are sharp (the front cub anyway). The back cub is soft due to the shallow depth of field at F2.8 on the 300mm.

The fifth photograph in my Wildlife Portraits Project  is of a juvenile Mandrill taken at the Melbourne Zoo. This was shot with the Canon 1DSMK3 and 300mm F2.8L IS lens wide open at ISO800 through a pane of glass on a very overcast day (with very low light levels).  The 1DSMK3 and the 300mm F2.L IS is an amazing camera/lens combination. Even wide open this lens is about as sharp as one could want on the full frame 21.1 mega pixel 1DSMK3. In this instance, the camera has nailed focus right on the eyes and provided a silky smooth bokeh to separate and isolate the Mandrill from his surroundings. I really like this photograph for the ‘madness’ in this critters eyes and that ‘just groomed’ look to his hair. The small twig he is chewing on adds a little more interest to the photograph than if he had just been sitting there and completes the composition to my eye.