An Anthropomorphic Animal
NEX-6, 55-120mm E-Mount Lens @ 130mm, Aperture Priority Mode, 1/100 secs, ISO 3200, f/5.6
Well, it has been getting on for three months since I last posted, which is quite upsetting as it means I have fallen really far behind in my quest to complete the bucket list in just two years! However, I am hoping that once I have gotten back into the swing of it with this post, I will continue posting on a weekly basis once more. I haven’t simply just decided to be lazy – I have been away or out and about pretty much every week and weekend in these last few months – and if it helps, my house and washing/ironing piles have been equally neglected!
Another Anthropomorphic Animal – The way in which this little chap holds on to the grille over the light bulb reminds me of how a bored teenager might hold on to a railing or spiral iron staircase.
One thing that I have not neglected, however, is my passion for taking photographs, and my camera has been with me to Portugal, Le Mans and various family and friend type occasions – with a number of the images that I have taken ready to be used for posts in the coming weeks. So, on to the topic of this post – Anthropomorphic Animals. For those who do not know already, this means an animal that has something about it which reminds you of a human, such as the expression on their face, or the way in which they move or hold themselves, or maybe if they start having a conversation with you – such as Walt Disney and Pixar characters. In real life though, we would normally have to make do with monkeys and gorillas.
The expression on the face of this tiny little monkey looks very human to me – with the white moustache finishing off the look nicely.
I visited Chester Zoo with my Mum, Brother and Nephew back in April, and was keen to take some shots of the various animals that they have there. Unfortunately, as you may be able to see from the three photos so far, it is not all that easy to capture well-lit photos from a close distance. The featured shot was taken through a large glass window, in dim conditions, and coupled with my carelessness of forgetting to set the ISO to a lower number (less than 1600 ideally) has turned out rather flat and full of digital noise. To be fair, I wasn’t really expecting to have much use for it, because of the conditions, so I didn’t really pay much attention to the settings before shooting. It does have the most human-like expression though, which is why I decided to use it after all.
Not an Anthropomorphic Animal – or is it?! There is a striking resemblance to my ex-girlfriend!
For me, the favourite shot I took that day was the vulture above. The details in the beak and feathers are nice and sharp, with the colours on the beak adding even more interest. It is somewhat ruined by the fact that I was shooting through a wire fence of course!
An Amphibious Animal
Once again, my artistic intentions were ruined by the confines of the animals’s container, with thick glass being the culprit on this occasion. Along with the digital noise created by me leaving the camera in automatic ISO mode, allowing it to choose 3200 as the setting again. The twig in the foreground doesn’t do a great deal for the overall picture either, of course.
You may have realised by now that I didn’t take a note of any of the animal species that I photographed – these are birds of some description!
I was fairly pleased with this shot from the bird sanctuary, but you can still make out the blurred string fence which looks like a line of heat haze. The fencing often made it quite difficult to focus on the animals, as my camera’s autofocus often thought that the fence was more interesting. With a bit of help from the Direct Manual Focus (DMF) setting though, I managed to overcome that obstacle, and composed this shot along the rule of thirds grid that I choose to overlay my NEX-6’s viewfinder.
Not all of the animals were obstructed from view, but those that were not often had to be set well back from the general public, to avoid any mishaps, which meant that I was still unable to get anything resembling the award winning photos that I had intended to take when first setting out.
In reality, I should have been able to take some more interesting photos, with the issue being more about the fact I was photographing animals than about where the animals were and what they were behind. The fact that I was with a group of non-photographers, including a 21 month old toddler, with the attention span of a 21 month old toddler, meant that I did not really have the luxury of hanging around each of the animal enclosures for as long as I needed to in order to capture images of the animals doing things more out of the ordinary.
I am under no illusion that it would be far more rewarding photographic animals in their natural habitats, moving around freely instead of being confined to relatively small areas. However, it would also be much more difficult to do, in terms of time, finances, extra long lenses, danger and so on… So for now at least, I will have to stick with my local zoos whenever I feel like shooting (pictures of) exotic animals.
See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil
These three wise monkeys were huddled up in the top corner of their accommodation, and I needed to heavily alter the image to bring them out in to something resembling a view. They made me chuckle a bit though, so thought that I should include them here.
rank aperture 