Do you Zoo ? I do.

May is a good month to head to a zoo for some fun and photography. The temperatures are usually warm enough that all of the animals that can be outside, will be. They are also likely to be more active now than they are in July due to the heat. So the chances are better for the animal you want to photograph moving to an area that would give you a better shot. The kids still being in school in May is also a plus for a zoo trip, or at least it is for me.
   I know some photographers that will not photograph animals in a zoo. That's up to them of course, but I enjoy a good day of photography at a zoo. It presents it own challenges. I try very hard to not have any bars,fences or concrete walls in my shots. Composing a shot to eliminate as many man made elements as possible can make it tough, but it's a great learning experience. It will force you to pay more attention to your composition,backgrounds and the perspective or angle you shoot from. More practice at those things will improve anyones photography. One tip here on zoo photography that many people don't think about. It's ofter MUCH easier to use manual focus instead of auto when you are trying to take a photo through a chain link fence.
It's often pretty tough to get the camera to focus on the animal instead of the fence in auto focus mode. It's very easy to do that in manual focus. Many times, the fence won't show at all in your photo. Getting as close as possible to the fence helps this too. If you want to take this manual stuff even further, it would help to use as narrow of an aperture as possible too. Narrow meaning a smaller number.
If you are having a good day and all of the stars and planets are aligned, you can often get the aperture just right and have a nice sharp focused animal in your photo and not a bit of chain link fence, even though there may well be one between you and the animal and also one behind the animal. The easiest way to try this is to put your camera in Aperture mode and set the aperture as low as possible (smallest number). While in aperture mode the camera will set the appropriate shutter speed for you as you set or change the aperture.
   Just about any zoo you go to will also have a good many flowers on the grounds. No fences or bars here. Also, if you look, there will be lots of animals at the zoo that don't live at the zoo and no, I don't mean the afore mentioned kids. Bees and other photograph-able critters come in to get to the flowers. Wild birds will be there looking for food as will Chipmunks and Squirrels. If there is a pond within the zoo, it's likely to attract larger birds such as Herons and even Hawks. It's hard to tell what all you might see and be able to photograph at a zoo if you look hard enough. approach a photo trip to the zoo like you would any other place with a likely high concentration of animals. Look forward to it, go slow, try new techniques,be alert for photo opportunities and have a good time.