Walkogging at the Zoo

The biggest difference you'll find at the zoo is that since all of the "nature" is boxed up for you, your time will be spent more on finding the perfect pose than on just exploring your surroundings and trying to discover wildlife in the first place. A good way to approach the zoo is to consider the animal exhibits a series of portrait studios, and at each one you are trying to find the perfect image that will tell a viewer a lot about that animal in a single shot.

There are also some barriers (literally) in getting your shots that you would not find on the trail: cage bars, nets, fences, and glass. Of the four glass is the most easily managed by a casual walkogger. Simply bring your camera up very very close to the glass and shoot through it. However, you have to hope the zoo has been keeping their glass clean. Also take care not to crack or scratch your lens!

Bear in mind that some cages, fences, and mesh can also be shot through. If there are very wide gaps in the bars, try to aim through them. Some cameras also have the good zoom capacity needed to actually shoot through small-gap meshes and produce a photograph as if the mesh wasn't even there! You will have to experiment to find the limits of your own camera.








Zoom lenses will also come in handy for crossing something I would call the "minimum shooting gap." Basically when zoos do not have cages or glass between you and the animals, they make the separation using sheer distance (ex. with a chasm between the walkway and the exhibit) or with a moat.

Depending on the animal the gap can be as large as 30 feet before the exhibit area even starts, so the closest the animal can be to your camera at any time is 30 feet. At the Rosamond Gifford Zoo several of the exhibits are actually below a boardwalk, and you can only view those animals from a considerable distance above. Get a camera that can cover this distance and more to get quality zoo animal close-ups.

Zoos will also bring a unique new challenge to your walkography: indoor areas. For shooting indoor exhibits you will likely need to change your camera's ISO settings and/or try out different shooting modes. Bear in mind that many indoor exhibits have a "no flash photography" rule for the sake of the animals' well-being. Please respect this rule. Using the flash indoors can bleach out colors from your image as well. Shooting in low light takes practice and no uncertain amount of finessing; as a walkogger you may prefer to only photograph outdoor exhibits or get your 60 minutes done outside, then come inside to focus on the challenges of low light.

Rosamond Gifford Zoo was founded under the name Burnet Park Zoo in 1914. It was formerly under the control of the city of Syracuse, but was given to Onondaga County Parks in 1974 due to financial stress on the city. Unfortunately the transfer was catalyzed by an incident where two teens broke in and killed or injured 40 zoo animals.

Today the zoo is doing significantly better, with a series of new exhibits added since 2005. It is an AZA-accredited zoo (I recommend you ensure your local zoo is accredited before you patronize) with several accomplished breeding programs, most notably the one for Asian elephants. The elephant program has been having some difficulties lately, including an infant elephant's death after an accident in the elephant pool that dominated all the newspapers in Syracuse for some time.

The zoo is 8.09 hectares in size, making it rather small compared to the San Francisco Zoo (50 hectares) or the gigantic Toronto Zoo (287 hectares) a few hours north of Syracuse. Walking through the exhibits takes about 2 hours if you are familiar with the zoo, making it an ideal walkography environment.

Notable exhibits include Asian elephants, Amur tigers, lions, a snow leopard, and mandrills. To be honest I am rather surprised elephants and lions tolerate Syracuse winters, but the northerly Toronto Zoo has many other animals originating from warm climates in outdoor exhibits.

My favorite exhibit at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo is probably the aviary, which contains a number of tropical birds that would never, ever show their faces in Syracuse if they weren't being kept indoors.

Animals at the zoo offer a wide variety of challenges for walkoggers. Here are a few species-specific tips:

• Elephants. Elephants are big. Okay, that was probably obvious. But elephants are actually so big that they're out of the range of wildlife most walkoggers shoot on a daily basis. Instead of trying to get the whole elephant in one frame, start by taking shots of different parts you like. The ears, the trunk, even the feet make interesting photographic studies on their own. Because elephants are outside and don't have fur (though they do have hair), sunlight tends to glare off of them. Adjust your camera settings to compensate.

• Lions. Did you know that lions are primarily nocturnal? In the wild this means that they do most of their hunting at night, and in the zoo it means most of what you're going to see of lions is them lying around sleeping. To try and spot lions at their most active, go to the zoo near closing time. Immediately after the zoo closes, keepers generally start making their rounds to feed the animals. Lions will be up and about anticipating their meal. Also, like many animals, younger lions will be more active than mature ones. Don't pass up the opportunity if you hear your zoo has taken on new lion cubs!

• Penguins. Most of the zoos I have been to allow you to see penguins both above and below the water. Capturing a swimming penguin is a considerable challenge, especially if the sunlight isn't strong or the tank is indoors. Crank up your ISO setting and avoid zooming in the first few times you shoot penguins. Review the shots in your camera and tweak your settings, then shoot and tweak again. If your zoo has a public penguin feeding schedule, take the opportunity to set yourself up at the tank ahead of time. In an enclosed environment the penguins will usually take the same swimming route over and over again, and you can anticipate where they will be (they're very fast, so this is important).

• Birds (aviary, free-roaming). You may have to break your 5-minute time limit to get even one decent shot of aviary birds. You need to balance the somewhat uneven light of an aviary (it's usually part-artificial and part-natural), the presence of background obstructions, and the very quick movements of the birds themselves. I recommend getting yourself settled and taking photos from only one spot for about 5 minutes, and only then getting up to walk slowly around the aviary. The birds should be more comfortable with your presence at that point. The same strategy of "going-when-they're-being-fed" applies here too. At my local zoo they feed aviary terns by tossing small fish into the air, making for some dramatic flying poses.

• Birds (waterfowl and caged). Many zoo waterfowl are given free range, so they can end up in places you don't expect them (I saw a mallard paddling through the bears' swimming pool today). This also means you can sometimes get very close and pull off excellent profiles of the outgoing birds. Because they also associate readily with ponds and pools, try contrasting the shape of the bird with the ripples they make in the water.
  
  For example: flamingos are very skinny and if you were to reduce them to a basic set of shapes it would be a series of rectangles piled on top of each other. However, when a flamingo stands in the water, circular ripples radiate out from where its legs enter and provide a geometric opposite to the flamingo's shape (a circle surrounding rectangles). Incorporate water effects into your waterfowl shots. Season is also very important to both caged birds and waterfowl; go to the zoo in the Spring and Summer to see beautiful mating displays, like those of the peacock.
  
  Raptors (birds-of-prey) generally spend their days sitting on a single perch moving only their eyes or heads. In the wild this helps them conserve energy, since each hunting trip burns a lot of calories. In the zoo this means that standard shots of raptors will all look the same; you'll have to get creative to create a photo that stands apart. One valuable technique is to zoom in on the bird's head and hold your camera very steady so that you can capture all the minute details with no blurring. Shots like these may be simple (ex. a profile or front view with no action), but the beauty of the animal is very profound at such a high level of detail.

• Reptiles. Because most reptiles are part of indoor exhibits ("reptile houses"), the ISO alterations I mentioned earlier apply. Snakes and many lizards will generally lie quite still, making them ideal markers for tweaking your ISO settings. Turtles tend to be a little more mobile, and tortoises are actually in the fast lane of the reptile world. Coloration in reptiles is very subtle, such as patches of iridescence or faint tints of brown or yellow on a mostly-green lizard. If you're lucky the zoo will have arranged the lighting in each species' enclosure to emphasize its unique colors. However, it is up to you to properly calibrate your camera to the lighting and make the most of reptilian imagery.