I was surprised that I liked this shot at all. For one thing I generally don’t care for animal shots taken at the zoo. I guess its the whole idea of shooting a “wild” animal that is trapped in front of you. It kind of seems to me like paying a guide to take you on a hunt so that you can shoot a deer that’s tied off to a fence post!
On top of that, on this day the zoo was hot, crowded, and full of mosquitoes - so I was anything but inspired when I took the shot. Add to that the fact that I was shooting through at an inch of cloudy and scratched Plexiglas and I thought I certainly had the right prescription for an easily “deleteable” shot.
In this case though post processing made the difference. I started with the original shot, which was dull as a result of the cloudy plexi, and duplicated the background layer in overlay mode. This greatly improved the color saturation and gave me a much better starting point. From there I added a curves adjustment and high-pass sharpening for the final photo.
I had taken my Oly E-3 along for the shoot but unfortunately forgot to pack any batteries – what a pro! Luckily my old Panasonic Lumix Super-Zoom was in the car, with batteries, and I was able to use it for the day. Tech: Aperture Priority, 58mm, f3.6, 1/80, ISO 100, -1 exposure.
