After doing commercial, event and wedding photography for over 3 years, I realised that I haven’t been shooting for myself at all for a long time. I recall visiting the zoo and jurong bird park like 3 times / week after my whole department in Lucent Technologies was retrenched.

Photography technologies and equipment have improved dramatically since then as well. I brought my D3 along with the 200mm F2 lens to the bird park one morning and tried to see if there was a difference compared to a few years ago.

During my hobbyist days, I used to start early at the Jungle Jewels aviary trying to capture the hummingbirds, honeycreepers and the elusive yellow-hooded blackbirds.  Despite Dr Minerva’s advice to start at the waterfall aviary, I still visited my old haunt the Jungle Jewels first. However I quicky realised that it wasn’t as vibrant in the mornings as it used to be and promptly headed to the Waterfall Aviary.

The birds had their first feed at about 8.45am and they took turns flying to the dish to get their food. This was easy, I just had to find a good background and set the tripod up to wait for them to come. I caught a nice shot of a Livingstone Turaco posing for the camera.

I found this pair of crowned cranes looking for their breakfast along one of the side routes and started tracking them. I They didn’t move fast, but composition was important and I ditched the tripod and went handheld for more mobility.

I headed towards the hawk aviary for the show at 10am. I used to have a lot of problems catching flying shots of the hawks during the show with my Sony F505. The hawks were so fast I had to pre-focus and trigger when they passed the focus point. I probably got only 1 usable shot among the dozens of times I was at the hawk show those days.

This time, due to a combination of experience, fast focusing camera and a fast lens, I ended up with several decent shots during the show. This was my favourite among them. (continue reading…)