San Diego Zoo Part 3

Here are the final photos from our day at the San Diego Zoo.  I'm really looking forward and itching for our trip to Sea World this upcoming Saturday.  I will have to make sure my battery is fully charged -- something I had forgotten to do before we went to the Zoo - luckily though it didn't die on me while we were there.  I'm even considering bringing another memory card, usually I never need a backup.

The above Koala picture is another copy of one I posted in Part 2, minus fancy editing.

Don't worry that Lion is only sleeping!  She was just beautiful!  It was so overly crowded that I missed getting photos of the male Lion that was sleeping next to her.  And he gave some really good photos too.  Hopefully next time.

Here is that funny little monkey again.  He was a quick little guy.  Very hard to get still photos of him, especially getting the camera to focus on him and not the cage bars in time.  It was a fun challenge.

One of my daughter's favorite animals is the Orangutan.  There was a younger one as well that was showing off to the onlookers.  He was rolling along the ground right at the window while eating a piece of lettuce.  He rolled the whole length of the window and then disappeared.  I wish I had been able to get photos of him, but I was swapping out lenses at the time.  Luckily this guy came out for some photos.

San Diego Zoo Part 2

Can you believe I will need to do a Part 3?  I still have so many to share.

I just LOVE how my zebra photos came out, and really enjoyed the editing process just as much.  What I enjoy most of these photos is that they almost appear as one zebra looking into a mirror.  But it was two snuggling with each other.

I did a few different editing techniques with the koala photos.  One of these I listed in yesterday's blog that is the same koala in the same position and then another koala curled up on a different bamboo tree.

The meerkats were adorable.  They were twisting those little heads all over the place to look up at all the people admiring them and making noises at them.  It was so cute, this little grouping were too cute to resist.

My daughter loves any animal in the ape family.  Maybe its something rooted inside of her since before she was born.  From the first ultrasound getting our first peek at her, we called her a little monkey.  I had so much fun playing chase with this little guy.  He kept running all over his structure that I had to keep moving to get photos of him.  And I had to fight getting the picture to focus on him verse the cage in between us.

San Diego Zoo

Earlier this week, we bought our season passes to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo/Wild Animal Park.  Today, we took our daughter to the Zoo.  Next weekend is her birthday, and we will be taking her to Sea World.  The Wild Animal Park has a photo caravan tour that I can't wait to do! If I got some really good today, I can only imagine the ones I will get on that tour!

I have so many that I want to share, that I think I will split them into 2 different posts.  Hope thats okay!  There are so many that I just fell in love with.  These are my best zoo photos so far.

It felt so good to get behind my camera.  I have felt so detached from it.  My husband joked that he would sleep on the couch so I could snuggle with the camera tonight.  Silly man!  I even used my new monopod.  Which I LOVE!  And I know will come in very handy next week at Sea World.

I could have stayed for hours at a few of the exhibits.  The giraffes were one of them.  They were magically beautiful and graceful.  Maybe next time we will try to do a feeding.  I think for $5 you can feed them 3 pieces of food.  They were just so pretty and so close up - I think that was the more surprising part.

The gorillas were so funny.  I missed a few good shots for not being in the right spot at the right time.  We even got to witness an almost fight between two of them.  But the big man in charge snipped it in the rear right away.  He was magnificent, just huge, old, and very much in charge that was very obvious just by looking at him.  We even got to see some zebras fighting. One even reared back with both legs to kick the other right in the face.  It was such a sight.  I have never seen that up close like that before.  Course the zebras gave much more of a show in other ways.  :P