A beautiful cool winter’s morning is the best time to visit one the three zoos in Victoria and on this trip we were not disappointed. The male lions posed sleepily in the early morning sunlight:
The orangutan climbed to the top of his enclosure to make a comfy spot to bask in the sunlight:
The reptile house is always a good place to stop in and warm up when it gets a little too cold for the shutter fingers, especially when there are such awesome subjects like the Madagascar Day Gecko seemingly posing for photographs:
Moving on from the reptile house, we found the baboons strutting around showing off the newest baby to everyone:
Even the koala’s were enjoying the sun’s warmth, but did give a bit of a stare at some noisy visitors passing by:
The long-necked stork or jabiru also seemed to be enjoying just standing around waiting to be photographed:
While this cheeky little one flew over towards us and then sat at almost the end of the lens checking us out:
Speaking of cheeky, the gorgeous Tasmanian Devil seemed to be taunting me as he ran around his enclosure, stopping just long enough in one spot to focus in on him before he took off again. Luckily I managed to anticipate where he was going occasionally and so managed to capture this shot:
Wandering further around we came to the giraffe enclosure. Here we had some funny moments with other zoo visitors. Giraffe’s are pretty tall animals as we all know, so you generally need to point the lens upwards if you want to photograph their heads. In spite of having my 600mm lens on an almost 45-degree angle, positioned and pointing well above the passing crowd, people were still trying to duck down to avoid getting in shot. Unless they were at least as tall as the giraffes, there was no way I was even going to get the tops of their heads in shot. Still it is nice of these people to consider others as they walk around the grounds.
The main purpose of our visit this time, however, was to try and capture a nice photo of the gorillas. Staking out a good spot prior to the "Meet the keeper" talk, everything was set, except the gorillas seemed to be interested in staying inside a little longer (and who can blame them on a cold morning). Eventually they strode into view, giving us a great opportunity to photograph these magnificent creatures.
Leading to what I think was the best photo of the day:
