Cardinals

I took these at John Chesnut Sr. Park in Palm Harbor, Fla. about a month apart. The one directly below of the female cardinal I took with a Canon 7D Mark II and Canon EF 400mm f/4 DO IS II USM lens. And, yes, I do know what all those letters in the lens's name stand for!

A photo posted by @PhotoQuist on Mar 22, 2015 at 5:10am PDT

I took the shot of the male with a Nikon D810 and 200-400mm f/4 lens. This one didn't need it, but I love the D810s massive 36MP size that lets you crop a lot and still have an file large enough to make large prints.

A photo posted by @PhotoQuist on Feb 10, 2015 at 4:13am PST

Lowry Park Zoo

Sign of the times. Five-dollar day at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo costs $6 now. I have less luck each time I go shoot at the zoo.

Some of the exhibits aren't as good as they once were. Some of the animals stayed either out of sight or at least out of shooting range to avoid the sun. And, finally, I had trouble with my camera not liking the new SD card, and I was stupid enough not to have brought a backup (Yeah, lesson learned!).

So I got only a few decent shots. These are not cropped, thanks to the joy of a 500mm lens.

Parrot Heads

With due respect to Jimmy Buffet fans, the title refers to actual birds.

I shoot too infrequently, which I realize is how I preface all my entries now, but I did pull the camera out last week to shoot some birds (as opposed to "flip some birds") at Sarasota Jungle Gardens. Most of these are not cropped much, if any. If you shoot wider, shots reveal that the birds are captives at some kind of attraction. I want you to see the birds, not their artificial setting.

Parrots and Flamingos Photos

It helps when you can get out of your own way. I remembered to turn OFF the super steady shot function on my camera, which you are supposed to do when shooting from atop a tripod because in looking for vibrations to counteract, the steadying function actually creates vibration.

You can really see the difference in sharpness when you look at the photos at original size. They look like the images you'd expect to come from a $2,000 lens.

The venue is a tourist attraction called Sarasota Jungle Gardens. There are, as the name suggests, gardens, though in August not many are flowering. The upside is that this is also the off-season so there aren't many people to contend with and I could park my tripod in front of the exotic bird exhibit and snap away.

I didn't shoot many full body shots of the birds because it makes the artificial background too obvious. Parrots spend a lot of their time grooming themselves, and each other! As you'll notice, they also sleep standing up.



Flamingos populate the park, roaming free among the patrons, who can buy food to feed them. That makes them willing to let you get close to them. These tall birds better lend themselves to portrait oriented shots.