Trip to the Zoo

[Rasbury]

Here's a few photo's from a recent trip to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens this past weekend.I am quite pleased with some of these as the lighting was not very good at the indoor exhibits and the noise in the photo's was somewhat bad.On those afore mentioned photo's i applied selective sharpening then selective blurring to try and mask out the noise.C&C are very welcome.Thanks for viewing...Ron

[Davidd]

I really like all of them Ron - beautifully composed, the blurring/sharpening makes the creatures pop out nicely. Love those lazy elegant coils of the mamba, they take the eye on a journey and then you're back at that green head... I guess that some might prefer the head looking dangerously at the camera, but the beautiful patterning of the skin is something to admire. What are those creatures in the last photo? Cute.

[jiro]

All are very nice, Ron. Exposure, detail, sharpness, and color are just awesome. I think your images improved by leaps and bounds on such a very short time. Awesome! 5 thumbs, bruddah.

[Rasbury]

I really like all of them Ron - beautifully composed, the blurring/sharpening makes the creatures pop out nicely. Love those lazy elegant coils of the mamba, they take the eye on a journey and then you're back at that green head... I guess that some might prefer the head looking dangerously at the camera, but the beautiful patterning of the skin is something to admire. What are those creatures in the last photo? Cute.

Thanks David.I do have an image of the green mamba looking straight into the face of it,but i do agree with you on the patter of the skin.Seeing it in person just amazed me at how beautiful that snake really was.Also have a photo of a Gaboon Viper who's skin is even more colorful than the mamba.And to think something this beautiful can kill you with one bite.
The last image is a photo of two Cotton Top Tamarin's.Quite difficult to photo as the lower one kept hiding behind the plants and the upper one was running around the enclosure and would not sit still long enough.he finally setteled down when he joined his friend.
Thanks for viewing...Ron

[Rasbury]

All are very nice, Ron. Exposure, detail, sharpness, and color are just awesome. I think your images improved by leaps and bounds on such a very short time. Awesome! 5 thumbs, bruddah.

Thanks Jiro.I only have yourself and everyone else to thank on this site for my fast improvement in my image taking and post processing...Ron

[peterindb]

What noise? You really did a great job getting rid of them.

Love the bullfrog picture. From the selective sharpening, it looks close enough to lick you.

[Rasbury]

What noise? You really did a great job getting rid of them.

Love the bullfrog picture. From the selective sharpening, it looks close enough to lick you.

Thanks Peter.The bullfrog was pretty close to the glass and i was using my 18-55mm lens so i could get up on the glass to take these photo's.Here's the images of the bullfrog and mamba sooc so you could see the noise i was dealiong with.Used a slight sharpening in NX2 raw conversion which amplified the noise a little and have yet to come to grips with using the noise reduction part of CS3.



Both of these a pretty much sooc except for minor adjustments in raw conversion.

[Steve S]

Excellent job on all four, ron. Well done!

[Davidd]

Hmm, not sure noise is an issue here, really, Ron - you made a BIG difference by your processing though, seemingly by sharpening and brightening the images and transforming them from two dimensions into three. If you can do that, who cares about noise?

You've brought some happy memories of a trip to Florida a few years back, gazing at reptiles and other creatures, scaring myself silly on the rides and drinking beer in the sunshine at Busch Gardens!

[Rasbury]

This is another view point of the same green mamba.I have it looking into the camera in this photo but you can't see the skin very well.I do like the snake running from the bottom left corner to the top righr though.C&C are very welcome on this image to.Thanks for viewing...Ron

[Davidd]

Yes, the diagonal lines work very well - the fronds one way, branch and snake the other. A little too contrasty in this one and the shadows too dark but nice pic Ron.

[KeithH]

A lovely series of shot Ron as already noted. I would like to see just the chimps lightened a touch so that I can see more detail in the faces and fur but even so, I srill like them loads. Very well done,