Emus on the Roam

As I mentioned in the last post, I've recently had the opportunity to visit the Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, NSW. I took lots of photos (800+), so I've got lots of pics to post on this blog. For the first picture, I've chosen a subject that is uniquely Australian - an Emu.

The Western Plains Zoo has a good setup for photographing the animals. Instead of planting 8-foot fences between the people and animals, there is a sort of moat-and-wall arrangement, where you effectively stand on a mound of earth which puts you level with the top of the fence. This gives you a clear line of sight to the animals, which is great for photos

These emus were quite inquisitive, coming right to the edge of the "fence" to get their photos taken. With 10x zoom, I was able to get some good close-ups of the emus' heads.

The photo above shows a head-on view of the emu, while the photo below portrays the bird from the side. Both of these photos seem to portray a sense of action and alertness, as if the emu is utterly aware of your presence and is waiting for you to make the first move.

Overall the visit to the zoo was a fruitful exercise, and should merit a plethora of new photos for this blog. I look forward to sharing these photos, and I hope you will enjoy them too. I've been playing around with wide-screen photography, and the second emu photo in this post is an example of this. Hopefully I'll be putting up some of my shots in this format, it seem to convey a very different impression to standard 8x10 or 6x4 photography.

These photos taken with the Fujifilm S9600 digital camera.
Related Photos:

Lazy Sunday (Bearded Dragon Lizard)
Kangaroo in mid-air
Hairy Caterpillar