Monkey Island at Amazona Zoo is the home to the squirrel monkeys. As the name suggests it’s a little island in the main lake [well, pond] inhabited by the squirrel monkeys. Access is by means of submerged RSJ’s allowing you to easily wade across the water whilst stopping the monkeys from doing the same. Unfortunately for me the boots I borrowed had a large split in them so I ended up with a very wet foot. Since I was carrying roughly 5 grands worth of camera equipment at the time I wasn’t going to rush and just had to accept that the boot was going to rapidly fill with water.

The monkeys have a number of ropes and trees to play on and they are tame enough that you can hand feed them, although they do sometimes bite when they get a little over enthusiastic. I’ve only spent a few minutes on the island as I still need to sort out some boots, but the monkeys are so photogenic you can’t fail to get good pictures.  One day I’ll spend an entire day camped out there armed with an array of lenses and several bags of grapes.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the squirrel monkeys gallery in the cromer zoo section.

It’s no secret that I love big cats (this will become very apparent as I slowly managed to upload my backlog of photos up to the web). While my personal favorites will always be snow leopards it’s got to be said that jaguars also rate highly on my list. Luckily for me Amazona Zoo has two jaguars, Indiana and Troy, who inhabit a brilliant enclosure with loads of grass which leads to great colours in the background.

The jag’s haven’t been at the zoo as long as the pumas so I’ve had much less of a chance to photograph them (I’ve spent no more than 4 hours with them). With the zoo also being open to the public now it’s also harder for me to get the access and spend the large chunks of time with the animals. Still, in the time I have had with them I’ve managed to get these two shots, one of which is possibly one of the best photographs I’ve ever taken.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the jaguars gallery in the cromer zoo section.

It’s got to be said, rhea are spectacularly stupid birds. This is most apparent when they are drinking. They snap at the water in what looks to be a highly ineffecient method of drinking and end up drenching thier heads. They will then shake their head to remove the excess water and, in the case of the rhea at Amazona Zoo proceed to bash thier heads against the fence because they haven’t moved far enough away. Of course nothing can beat the fact that one of the 4 that are at Amazona decided to just keel over and die on the opening day in front of a, thankfully very understanding, public.

Being a new enclosure the plant life, such that there is, hasn’t really had time to establish so the birds do, unfortunately, have rather a bland background to photograph against. Grey bird on brown background isn’t the best of combinations but hopefully the ones I’ve got aren’t too bad. I’ve also been trying some interesting shots with flash leaving the background completely black but I’ve yet to have a good one of those come out yet. Perhaps next weekend.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the rhea gallery in the cromer zoo section.

I recently got my camera back from the repair center where they had replaced the shutter, upgraded the firmware and given the whole thing a service. This did, unfortunately, mean that a lot of my settings had been played with or reset. Since I couldn’t remember half of the settings I’d used I decided to just take the camera out for a day and fiddle.

The day in question was a friends birthday meal, followed by a quick drink in the pub, a film and, finally, a drink in the local. I finally realised why the camera completely blows some images when the flash is on (if the flash isn’t properly seated the TTL light doesn’t go on and the flash fires at full strength) which was useful.

It was unfortunate that the weather wasn’t too great and the walk to and from the restaurant was a little rushed as Long Melford has some wonderful photographic potential. The group of people I was with were also no overly keen on being photographed which made getting relaxed, natural photographs hard. That said, I did manage to get a good shot of almost everyone who attended plus a random macro of the table decoration.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the portraits and random images galleries. The images from Lee’s birthday can be found under the protected section in the gallery: Lee’s Birthday.

I wouldn’t normally rate zoos as a great source of photographs, many of the animals are behind fences, there are standoff barriers keeping you back and you’re often only spending a little amount of time with each animal. I’m lucky in so far as my step father is curator of a new zoo in Cromer meaning I get unprecedented access to the animals, early access to the zoo (so very few people around) and the house is in the zoo grounds allowing me spend as much time as I like with each animal and photograph them at the best times of day.

My primary focus was the two pumas that had just arrived. Called pinky and blacky (so called because of the colour of their noses) I spent many hours rattling off shots of these two. Pinky seemed to have settled in very well and spent most of the time on top of one of the large trees that had been put in the enclosure simply watching the world go by. Blacky, on the other hand, had not settled at all.

Despite not being able to go into the enclosure with the cats (they’re far too dangerous) I was able to get up close to the enclosure fence and get some pretty good shots. Even with a nice wide aperture blurring the fence out actually getting decent shots was hard so being able to spend the time with them to get the best poses was a godsend.

Even getting into the enclosures didn’t always help with getting rid of the fences. I spent over 3 hours lying in the aguti enclosure waiting for the perfect shot. Only one of them would come out while I was in there and even then he kept to the edges of the enclosure. By picking some creative angles I was able to get a few shots where it wasn’t apparent that the animal was captive

Despite going for the pumas I actually spent the most time with the marmosets. My usual cry when doing wildlife photography is ‘bigger lens’ and I do most of it with my 70-200, often with a 2x teleconverter. The marmosets, on the other hand, were so inquisitive that I ended up using my 24-70 lens and even my 100mm macro since it’s the only thing that would focus at the kind of distances I was having to deal with. The biggest problem I had was framing the shots before the darted off to another branch as they move incredibly fast. Eventually the monkeys got so comfortable with me around that they were trying to grab the camera and were putting their heads right into the lens hood to check out their reflections.

Unfortunately I lost a day and a half’s shooting as my camera decided to break down mid way through my holiday and I hadn’t brought my spare body. I did manage to get a couple of shots of some of the other animals but I’ll have to go up another time when my camera has been repaired. Hopefully then the rest of the animals will have arrived.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the pumas, marmosets, aguti and random animals galleries in the cromer zoo section.

You never know what’s going to make a good photograph so I am forever grabbing shots of totally random stuff. Most of it just gets binned but occasionally I get a good shot.

Bark makes for wonderful ‘texture’ shots, especially when the lighting is right. Different trees give different effects and it’s simply a question of experimenting.

Texture shots can be got from all sorts, it’s just a question of looking around and seeing what’s about.

Sometimes it’s simply a question of seeing an interesting rock or tree trunk. Having a lens with a nice wide aperture and good bokeh helps with this kind of shot.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the random images gallery.

When people think of portrait photography they usually think of contrived shots with a fake backdrop, studio lighting and fake smiles. For me portrait photography is more about capturing real people in the moment. I started doing portraiture quite by accident after a family outing to Bolton Abbey. Rain meant that photographing the Abbey and grounds wasn’t going to happen so I turned the camera on my family instead with some very good results.

While most people say you should use 85-135mm 35mm equivalent lenses for portraits (roughly 70mm to 100mm on my camera) I tend to go for a longer 70-200mm lens, quite often with a 2x teleconveter to give 140-400mm. The shots of my brother and nephew were both done with the teleconverter meaning I could shoot them from quite a distance away and they had no idea they were being photographed, hence the great natural expression.

Ironically enough the 100mm macro is also a great portrait lens giving great bokeh to the backround. The lens is also less intrusive than the 24-70 f2.8 L or the 70-200 f2.8 L meaning people are more at ease (shoving a large lens in peoples faces tends to terrify them).

Of course there is nothing to say you can’t get a bit creative with your portraits. This shot of my niece was done with a 50mm f1.4 close up giving a slightly distorted perspective, and the shot of Poppy is done with the 100mm macro at a very close distance meaning her face fills the frame nicely.

Portraits don’t just have to be of people, they can also be of pets (I would argue that calling pictures of pets ‘wildlife’ photography is stretching a point somewhat), although it can be somewhat harder to get them to do what you want.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the portraits gallery.

Good photography can be found just about anywhere if you know what to look for. Quite a number of my best images have come from my own back garden (in the days when I had one), other peoples gardens and public gardens. Places like Kew Gardens and RHS Wisley are a veritable treasure trove of colours, textures and shapes.

Spring is an excellent time to get some fantastic shots of the garden (or local park if, like me, you don’t have your own garden). Grab your camera, a lens with a nice big aperture (long lenses and macro lenses help no end here) and let rip for a couple of hours. That’s precisely what I did when I took my daisy picture, I’d just got my shiny new 70-200mm f2.8 IS L lens and wanted to try it out. I went straight out into the garden to take a couple of hundred shots. Back then I was still very much learning but the afternoons shooting taught me a lot about photographing flowers. 3 years later I’m still taking random shots of giant daisy’s, albeit yellow this time.

One of the biggest problems I find with nature is that it’s messy. If you look at the daisy picture you’ll notice petals out of place, dead flowers and other gumph that, for me, detracts from the image. You’ll often see me tidying up round flowers clearing away damaged petals, dead flowers and the like just to neaten the shot up. this isn’t always possible, as was the case with the roses at Kew. Here I gave up on the flowers all together and concentrated on the branches instead. The resulting image was far better than any of the flower shots I could have got. Also choosing which flower to shoot can make a massive difference. The pink flower shot is one of about 20 from all different angles.

A good macro lens can open up a whole new world of photography allowing for real closeups of insects and tight depth of field. Where there are flowers there are invariably bees. I’m still chasing the perfect ‘in flight’ image, but in the mean time my image of a bee on a lavender bush will have to do. By throwing the background out completely I’ve managed to get a lovely purple colour and hide the fact that this was actually a lavender bush in a pot on a balcony. Similarly with the wheat photo the macro allows a good closeup of a stalk of wheat while throwing the background out to a lovely golden colour.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the in the garden gallery.