Digital Photography Hacks

Photograph Zoo Animals Without Bars

With a little photographic wizardry, you can take pictures of your favorite animals at the zoo and eliminate the bars that stand between you.

Zoos and animal parks present great opportunities for wildlife shots that many of us would be unable to get otherwise. The problem is that we have to contend with those troublesome bars. Or do we? This hack shows how to set your images free; you can get great animal shots and eliminate the bars that cage them.

You can get rid of the bars, or minimize their impact on the photo, by taking advantage of the same shallow depth of field you use to blur the background in portrait shots [Hack #27] . However, in this case you want to blur the foreground. You need to open the aperture wide to make the depth of field shallow, with only the subject in focus, not the bars. Figure 8-20 shows the difference that changing the aperture can make.

Figure 8-20. Same shot at different apertures—f-4.5 and f-36

The easiest way to shoot with the aperture wide open is to put the camera in AV (Aperture Value or, as we refer to it, Aperture Priority ) mode so that you set the aperture while the camera picks the best shutter speed to obtain a good exposure. Once you’re in AV mode, just set the aperture to as low a number as possible, such as f-2.8, f-3.5, f-4.5, or f-5.6. If your camera doesn’t have an AV mode, give Portrait mode a try. ...