HoustonPhotog.com / LongoriaPhotography.com

“I’m tired of all these mutha f*cking snakes on this mutha f*cking plane!” Sorry.. The Samuel L. Jackson skit just popped into my while thinking of a blog title. Ha!

This shot as taken at the Houston Zoo in the reptile center where most of the glass is all dirty and dingy. A tip for photogs out there, I found that shooting at the longest focal length you can get away with AND of course shooting wide open will help make those dingy glass panels go away. Another great tip (in my mind anyways) is to shoot with your lens hood on and place is square against the glass getting those dingy scuff marks and spots as close to the front of the lens as possible. This will aide in making them disappear in your shot.

As a great added bonus, placing your lens hood square against the glass panel will now allow you to shoot at a much slower shutter speed because your camera will be very still with no camera shake. Just before snapping a photo take a deep breath and press the shutter release button softly. These slower shutter speeds will help keep your ISO low, which means a nice clean, low noise image which is always a great thing! Of course this won’t work with some reptiles that are moving and running around etc but it works great for snakes since they’re usually just sitting there… nice and still.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L : 1/30th : f/2.8 : 400 ISO : 70mm : Aperture Priority : -2/3 Bias : No Flash

Pug Mark Park is a wildlife preserve which is located in McKinney, Texas. The park consists of 3 large cats, a lioness named “Sugar” and two female Siberian Tigers named “Sheba” and “Pookie”. The preserve is family owned an operated and it is obvious how much this family loves these magnificent animals.

For probably the past 4 years or so they have opened their doors to groups of photographers from my other website TexasPhotoForum.com to come in and spend a couple of hours photographing these animals. Typically at a conventional zoo, by the time you get in the doors and make your way to the tiger habitat the animals are in “lazy mode” and are just laying around since they’ve been out for a few hours already. What’s nice at Pug Mark Park is that you get there at 7am and the family will let one cat out into the habitat one at a time giving us photographers an opportunity to photograph them while they’re all frisky and playful. This really makes a difference from a photographer’s standpoint since that definitely makes for better photographs!

Here is Pookie, their eldest female Siberian Tiger. In fact, I was given a whisker as a gift by the owners which they said was a very rare find and was also to be good luck. The whisker is about 8″ long and is very thick yet pliable. I have it set aside so that I can mount it along with a photo of Pookie for my office wall. I just need to decide which one to print!

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L : 1/800th : f/2.8 : 640 ISO : 200mm : Aperture Priority : -1/3 Bias : No Flash

Here is Rocky, the 600lb male Siberian Tiger that unfortunately had to be put to sleep earlier this year. I believe he was about 15-16 yrs old and his body was just too worn down in order to keep him in good health. Knowing the family that owns the preserve I can assure you that this was probably a very tough decision for them to make. R.I.P. Rocky.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L : 1/400th : f/5 : 500 ISO : 200mm : Aperture Priority : -1/3 Bias : No Flash

It was amazing to see an animal of Rocky’s size and stature stand just a couple of feet away. It was also crazy to feel the ground tremor when he plopped his big ole body onto the ground to scratch his back much like a domestic house cat would do. Hehee… =]