I had an interesting and ultimately pricey revelation this past week, on the “getting closer” theme of today’s post. Grandson Mark (with me days during the school break) and I went on a photo shoot at the zoo since the weather was quite reasonable and he wanted to try out his “new” lens and camera combo. In truth the lens was a quite venerable (but good) zoom that I had abandoned a couple of years ago, and the camera body (new to him) is my sadly abused Nikon D200, the one I have worked almost to death. Since the old zoom he was using didn’t work on the previous cast-off digital he got from me, this was his first outing with the “big” lens. It was also the first time ever that we were standing side by side taking essentially the same shots and both with zoom lenses.
I downloaded my photos when we got home, and they were about the usual. Then I thought I’d see how his looked. Big mistake!! I had forgotten how much closer you could zoom in with the old lens. It’s a 70-300 zoom (which on a digital SLR actually brings you even closer than the stated top end) while my fancy new zoom tops out at 200. Of course it is a much “faster” lens and has superior features, but darn it, I was jealous of his extra zoom power with the old lens.
What to do? My first thought was “I want that lens back” but really, I couldn’t go there as I had given it to him and he was so thrilled with it. Next step was to start researching what I could get in the way of a new lens. I knew I wasn’t going to be getting a 300 zoom with the same fast capacity as my 200, as I’d priced them out when I bought the 200 and at that time the 300 zoom lens was not only $5000 but so long I wasn’t sure about hand-holding it effectively. I kept coming across good reviews of a Nikon 70-300 lens that wasn’t particularly fast but that had uniformly good reviews on a number of photo sites, wasn’t heavy or enormously long, and was a relatively reasonable price. Even better, when I emailed my contact at the camera store I frequent, it turned out that not only was the price better than I was expecting, but it was on sale, hence an even better bargain. Need I go on to say that I am now the happy owner of this lens?
On to the photos. You’ll notice a change in format here (if you have wandered by this blog before). My husband suggested this might be more user friendly than my previous way of having all the text on top and the photos on the bottom. In truth, when I first started this blog a couple of years back, the “old” method was how it initially presented itself and I was too frightened by the technology to try to mess with it. Then I forgot about the whole thing until Jim mentioned it last week, so this time I’m trying for a more “integrated” approach and so far I seem to have a grip on it. I guess the only question now is whether the text that goes with each picture should be above or below it. My instinct is to put the text below the shot it belongs to, but if anyone out there thinks differently, feel free to make suggestions.
Shot one, unlike most of today’s, was not taken at the zoo, although some people who visit my house might beg to differ. This is my grand-dog Arrow, ready to be let in the back door after her visit to the yard. Most of the other dogs, resident and visitors, bark to let me know they want in. Arrow just rises up on her back legs and stares intently, often a futile effort since I’m not usually in the kitchen which is where this door is located. She got lucky the day of this shot as I was right on the spot, although she had to wait for me to find a camera and get my shot first. And no, she doesn’t end up staring forever if I’m not right on hand. She will eventually bark if she needs to.
Shot two is from the “revelation” shoot that Mark and I did together last week. This is as close as I could zoom in with the 200 upper limit lens.

This shot is one I got today with the 300 zoom. Lion is in the same location, as was I. You can see how much closer in this lens gets. I won’t get into the details of trying to shoot between the wires on enclosures at the zoo, an ongoing vexation that has to be worked around, not always in a satisfactory fashion.


I’m always entertained by magpies, and there were a pair of them working around these sheep?goats? today. I have a feeling they are some sort of European wild sheep, but didn’t note the name so I can’t say for sure. Actually now that I think about it the ram was definitely sheep-looking in the horn department. I watched this particular sheep and magpie for quite a while. The magpie was very busily doing something around and under the sheep, which stood like a statue the whole while, not moving a muscle. Eventually one of the magpies perched briefly on a sheep, but I was in the midst of relocating my position as that happened and couldn’t get focussed quickly enough to get that shot.

This is the “now for something completely different” shot of the day. I’ve been creating unicorns for the past while on an intermittent basis. I was sorting through a bunch of my horse shots for another project when I came across this Gypsy cob foal shot from last spring, and thought how cute he’d be as a unicorn foal, so here he is. I’m still working on this image and it will likely evolve a bit yet, but this is where he’s at for the moment.
I’m off to watch the figure skating at the Olympics now. Go, Canada!

©Copyright 2009 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.