African Wild Dogs - Werribee Zoo • Travis Hale (Photography and Science)

The African Wild dogs sit well at the Werribee Zoo, which has somewhat of an African theme. These animals are hypercarnivores which mean's that they obtain more than 70% of their diet from meat. The wild dog is a Canid which is differentiated to that of a Canis due to fewer toes, and a different dental structure.

As the day was hot, this made the photography easier since the animals were sitting and relaxing rather than running around. With this in mind I did not have to worry about shutter speeds and movement of the animal, but rather just had to worry about getting a suitable vantage point and making sure I eliminated any motion blur.

Because I used the Tamron 150-600mm at the longer focal length it was important to ensure that I had a shutter speed which was faster than 1/focal length, in the case of 600mm I would need a shutter speed of 1/600mm to prevent motion blur. Being a bright day, this was fairly easy to achieve without a tripod :).

Equipment Used:

As with all of my images, I use Nikon gear. This is not because I think Nikon is better than Canon but just because it is what I got started with and wanted to maintain lens compatibility. The images were captured and edited with the following gear;