Edmonton Zoo – 1
This begins my series of photos from our summer holidays in Edmonton and Jasper National Park. Not all shots are masterpieces, but they will hopefully give you a scenic tour of what we saw on our trip.
On the way to Edmonton we heard on the radio that it was family day at the zoo and that there demonstrators protesting animal cruelty. We reconsidered our first stop, but decided to check it out anyway since we didn’t have any better ideas.
Everything was fine. There were no signs of demonstrators and the zoo wasn’t nearly as busy as I expected it to be.
They definitely had more exotic animals than the Saskatoon zoo, but the admission was just slightly more. I understand how economies of scale work, but I was envious of their zoo wishing Saskatoon had a bit better paved paths and a few more interesting animals.
Though there was much to see, many of my shots had the zoo look. It wasn’t until we were asking ourselves where the elephant was that we stopped mid-sentence as we rounded a corner to see her being moved from one area to her environment. I began shooting, not realizing that her path would lead her less than four feet away from me.
This uncropped photo was taken with a 70mm focal length. For readers unaware of the meaning of focal lengths, the human eye sees very near a 50mm focal length perspective. This was approximately a 1.3x magnification factor. Just imagine how close you would need to be to this girl for her eye and face to fill you field of vision. That was my reaction, also.
Tags: 2010, edmonton, holidays, vacation, valley, zoo