Berlin Zoo and Aquarium

I spent a few hours at the zoo today – that was a blast. I had so much fun wandering around by myself, taking pictures of anything that moved. I shot 240 pictures, and have pared that down to 155 that are in focus and not basically the same shot of the same animal in the same position. Follow the links to the right of the post to see my pictures on Flickr.

In many situations, the auto-focus insisted on focusing on the bars or glass between me and my target, so I had to switch to manual focus. If any of the shots are slightly blurry, this is why. Most of them are fine, though. Click for more.

I took a lot of pictures in the aquarium and reptile house, but it’s hard to get good pictures of fish. And even harder to do so in a dark place, with no tripod. Nevertheless, there are some good ones in there. I had been intending to go through and pick some good ones to highlight in a post, but since it took so long for them to upload, that’s not going to happen tonight. I still really want to, so I may work on that tomorrow afternoon.

I didn’t get to see the polar bear cub born here recently. I’m not sure if I couldn’t find his enclosure, or if I did find it, and he was inside or elsewhere. I did see lots of big cats, and bears, and wolves, as well as some penguins and sea lions. In the aquarium I saw lots of cool-looking fish, a few enormous fish, and a lot of snakes and lizards. They even had a Diamondback Rattlesnake – made me feel right at home.

For anyone who’s wondering, I also added a new set to my pictures. It’s called DPS, and is completely unrelated to my pictures from Berlin. I’m participating in a contest on another site – Digital Photography School. This week’s contest is shots of something “affirmative”, hence my picture of the little “Walk” symbol here in the east side of Berlin.

In this photo, you can also see what the weather looked like today while I was walking around the zoo all afternoon – rainy. The temperature hovered around 60° all afternoon, with the occasional shower forcing me to pull out my umbrella so my camera didn’t get wet.

I have plans to go to church tomorrow, but I don’t know what I’m doing after that. Quite frankly, I’m too tired to think about it right now, so I’m going to sleep. Gute nacht!

Ok, I can’t resist just one.

He’s staring right at me. Either he really wanted to pose for my picture, or I look tasty.