It has been quite some time since I visited the zoo so it was really lovely to go along recently for my grandson's very first zoo trip. I didn't take nearly as many photos as I normally might have done but I did manage to get a few along the way while listening to my grandsons efforts to mimic different animal sounds.
In the past it has been almost impossible to get a decent shot of the mandrills as they have been behind glass, but since my last visit a number of the animals have been moved to different enclosures and this meant that the mandrills were outdoors and more easy to see. However these images are a perfect example of why editing photos is often necessary. They were all shot using a high ISO (1250), given that the beast was hiding in the shade of the shrubs and trees, but with a relatively fast shutter speed (1/600sec) to freeze the action as the Mandrill was pacing about. This combination was intended to keep noise to a minimum and produce a clear image. The fifth image in this selection is unedited to show that without some essential tweaks the picture would be pretty useless. If I had used a higher ISO or a slower shutter speed there would have been too much grain and blur so again the images would have been useless. Editing software however allows those problems to be solved, showing off this magnificent creature to stunning effect which would otherwise not have been possible.
