A Day at the Wildlife World Zoo

Last week my parents came to Phoenix to visit, and we went to the Wildlife World Zoo in Litchfield Park, Arizona. I have been wanting to take zoo pictures forever, so it seemed like the perfect time to take my camera along and capture some shots.

There were so many birds at the zoo!  A lot of them had such gorgeous, bright colored feathers..

I loved this one!...

Check out those amazing eyes!...

I love seeing the monkeys at the zoo! They are usually some of the most active animals there, except for this little guy who was crashed out for a nap...

I couldn't resist taking a picture of these cute little guys...

Loved the frogs!...

This guy looks like a fat little Budda frog :) ...

Tigers are are my all time favorite animals! It's not often that you actually see the tigers active in the zoo, and we were lucky enough to see both of these tigers up and walking around! We think that the animals knew it was almost dinner time, so that is why so many of them were active near the end of our visit...

I couldn't resist posting this one!...

The kangaroos were mostly laying around napping, but this one was willing to pose for a photo...

How would you like to carry around those horns all day?...

This is probably my favorite picture of the day! I just love his expression!...

I hope you enjoyed seeing the photos of the animals!

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

Happy 4th Birthday, Sweet Baby Lexi Lou!

My little fur baby, Lexi, turned 4 years old, so of course we had to celebrate with new toys and treats for her and Zoe.

They got a kick out of destroying the bag that her gift was in!...

My parents were visiting on her birthday, and even brought her a gift all the way from Michigan.  Lexi doesn't look too happy about Zoe stealing it, does she?

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

Macro Fun | Part 4

If you missed my other four posts about experimenting with a Macro Lens, you can find them here, here, here, and here.

Some of my favorite Macro Lens photographs taken by other photographers are of water droplets. So, I decided to try my hand at a few. Of course I'm not really a morning person (plus I live in the middle of the desert), so I had to fake it a bit. Instead of getting up to find some morning dew, I just turned on the hose and sprayed some nearby weeds and trees!

I love the detail of the reflect in the water droplet here...

This photo was a bit of a whoops, as I was trying to focus in on the water droplet and obviously I ended up with the leaf in focus instead.  But, I was amazed at the detail that was visible in the veins of the leaf and decided to include it for that reason...

This is a water droplet on the hose. If you look closely you can see a reflection of our rental house upside down in the drop of water...

And FINALLY, flowers!!!...

And there you have it!  A week's worth of photos from my Macro Lens Experiment!

So, now the looming question is.... Would I want to own this lens? I have to admit that shooting with this lens was TONS of fun, and I wasn't ready to return it by the time my week was up. I could have easily spent another few weeks experimenting with it. I really do think that I would enjoy having a Macro Lens, and I can see myself getting a bit more into nature photography if I owned one. That being said, I'm not sure that I would opt to purchase this exact lens. I felt like the lens was fairly heavy (and I'm not a wimp when it comes to lenses!) and I think it made it harder to hold the lens steady because I was getting tired from holding the lens up. I also felt like the auto focus wasn't very useful, so the USM basically just added useless weight. I haven't done any research on the options of Macro Lenses available, but if I was going to purchase one I would probably opt for a lighter weight lens, possibly without auto focus.

As always, thanks for stopping by and viewing my photos!

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

Macro Fun | Part 3

If you missed my other three posts about experimenting with a Macro Lens, you can find them here, here and here.

When I took my Intro to Photography class, one of our first assignments was to photograph motion. I opted to take pictures of a dripping faucet for that assignment, and all things considered (like the fact that I still had no idea how to use my camera!) the photos didn't turn out half bad. I had a lot of fun taking those shots, and wanted to see what I could do with a faucet using the Macro Lens (and having a bit more knowledge under my belt about my camera).

Considering that I took all of these shots with a hand-held camera, I think they turned out pretty darn good.  I had a really hard time narrowing down my favorites so I've opted to include several different shots.  I just love how you can see the inverted faucet and water droplet reflected back inside of each of the droplets.  I used the flash for these images, and I like how you can see the star burst from the flash in some of the droplets, too...

So, what do you think? Can you pick a fav? I keep trying, but I just can't!

After playing with the water droplets, I decided to experiment with the lens and some random items around the house.  It was during this experiment that I really got a handle on the DOF of the lens.  Here are a few of the images:

The side of a quarter....

Instead of flower bouquets, the bridesmaids at our wedding carried bouquets of beads. The following two photos are close ups of those beads...

Lexi's eyelashes...

An apple...

And a plum...

I was going to take a series of extreme close-ups like the two above and hold a contest to guess what the images were, but sadly I ran out of time with the lens before I captured very many.  So, I just included a few here instead. Would you have known what they were if I hadn't told you?

Part 4 will be posted soon, so stop back by and you will FINALLY see some flower photos that I took with the Macro Lens.

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

Macro Fun | Part 2

If you missed my other two posts about experimenting with a Macro Lens, they can be found here and here.

The second thing on my agenda with the Macro Lens was to find some flowers and insects to photograph, so I decided to see what I could scout out near the Gila River.  Unfortunately, I didn't quite have the hang of the lens yet and most of the flower images didn't turn out so great.  I had read over and over again how small the DOF is with Macro Lenses, but I guess I just didn't believe it until I saw it for myself. When I saw the images on my computer, I was shocked to see that only a very tiny portion of each flower was in focus.

Luckily, I did a bit better with the bugs!  I was actually quite surprised by how many insects I saw while I was out shooting, and even more surprised by how many I had captured on the flowers I was photographing without even realizing that they were there (but they were out of focus, of course!).

These are my three favorite bug images:

I especially like this one...

I like all of the detail you can see in the wings above, and I am in love with the lighting!  I was shooting in the early afternoon, and the sun was out full force.  I don't normally shoot at that time of day, but I figured I was going to take advantage of the time I had with the lens.  I was rather surprised by how many of the images were keepers because of the lighting, instead of in spite of it.

After finishing near the river, I decided to take photos of a nearby cotton field.  I've been getting such a kick out of seeing them everywhere near our rental house.  I actually can't remember ever seeing a cotton field before, but that seems highly unlikely!  I lived in Mississippi for 3 1/2 years, for crying out loud.  It has to be physically impossible to live in Mississippi and never lay eyes on a cotton field, doesn't it?  But, I seriously can't recall ever seeing one in person before.

Confession Time: I have this serious bad habit of being so excited to get started photographing at a new location, that I'll fire off a few shots before I check my camera settings.  Then I'll rein myself in, and glance at the settings only to realize how insanely off they are.  You'd think after over/under exposing my first 2-3 images every time I shoot, I'd stop doing this but I never do.  I just can't seem to contain my excitement at whatever I'm about to photograph and just HAVE to capture a few shots instantly.

Shooting in the cotton field was no exception, and this next image is the first photograph I took.  It was (is) insanely overexposed, and it took a crazy amount of editing to bring it back under control.  It's not even 100% in focus, but there is something about the composition of the image, and area at the top of the cotton where the sun is so intense, that kept calling out to me and I just couldn't resist including it.  When I look at this photograph, I can picture the sun glinting off of miles of bright white cotton on a hot scorching day on a big Southern plantation.  I can picture the workers out picking the cotton, sweat rolling down their faces, and their baskets overflowing with billowy white puffs.  I guess you could say that it tells a story to me that makes the image come to life (which is quite odd considering I've never actually seen that scene anywhere except in other photographs)...

.  

I am sooo in love with this entire set of photos!  I love the glare of the bright afternoon sun on the white cotton.  I love the texture that just screams out from some of these images.  I think I could have stayed in that field shooting for hours if I'd had the time.  Instead of rambling on and on, saying the same thing about each photo, I'll just let the rest of them speak for themselves:

Admittedly, this isn't the best use of a Macro Lens, but I wanted to capture a little more of the entire cotton field and it was the lens that I had at my disposal...

I hope you'll come back to check out the photos coming up in Part 3! There are some fun ones that I can't wait to share with you!

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.