Spending a few hours with the penguins recently was a lot of fun but photographically challenging. The light is very bright at and above the water level and quite dim below. For landscape photos you have time to use a graduated filter to adjust for the stark difference in the light. But penguins are fast creatures- they don’t lend themselves to tripods or graduated filters! Their quick motions also require a fast shutter speed to catch the movement. With an ISO of 4,000 this means the photo has to be denoised in post processing. And to get a shutter speed quick enough to catch the movement I had to use a wider f-stop with less depth of field (DOF) (2.8 for most of my photos). The small DOF works well here but sometimes isn’t desired depending on the angle of the penguin to the camera and the final effect you want. All told, it was an enjoyable morning of learning and always pleased to come away with some nice photos! Omaha Doorly Zoo is a wonderful zoo; we are lucky to live in Omaha!