The Cincinnati Zoo is only about 45 minutes from where I live in the South Dayton area.  But for as much as I love animals and photographing them, I find it difficult to get down that way.  I had this nagging feeling that it had been a while since I had been but was shocked to learn when I checked that my last trip to the Cincinnati Zoo was 15 years ago in 2010.  Enough excuses.  I was long overdue.  I made plans to take the Friday of the Memorial Day weekend off work and I went to the zoo.

The plan seemed like a good one – and it was.  The problem is that apparently everyone from a three state radius also had the same good plan.  The weather was phenomenal, so the zoo was packed.  Surprisingly, the amount of people there didn’t make it that much more difficult to take the photos I wanted.  I just had to be a little more patient in some cases.  I had also forgotten just how hilly the Cincinnati Zoo is.  I definitely got a good workout, but was pretty much able to cover the entire zoo in about two hours.  I shot almost exclusively with my Canon RF 70-200 f2.8.  That longest lens I currently have and it worked out just fine for about 50% of the shots.  The rest of the time I was really wishing I had more lens.  The zoo has changed quite a bit in the last 15 years as you might imagine and I don’t remember being this far away from the animals the way it was configured previously.  Fortunately, I had my lens matted to my Canon R5 Mark II – those 45 megapixels came in handy as I was able to crop my way into some usable photos.  But a 300mm or even 400mm focal length would have been better.  Here’s the best of what I got:

Despite the challenges it was enjoyable I may try to go back in October.