Paul Lester Photo

Shot through plexiglass
In my continuing quest of zoo coverage, I visited, for the first time, the zoo in Greenville, SC. About 2 hours from my home. I’ve mentioned Greenville before as a lovely town, but never mentioned the zoo. Again, I took the Nikon P-510 with me.

Of the 3 available zoos in the area, Greenville is the smallest – by far. The other two, Riverbanks Zoo, in Columbia, SC and The North Carolina Zoo at Asheboro are significantly larger, with the NC zoo being the largest by far.

The Greenville zoo reminds me of what the Akron zoo used to look like before its expansion. It’s a small zoo, about 75 acres. Most of the animals are in cages or behind thick sheets of plexiglass in need of replacement – at least as far as I am concerned, as a photographer. The glass is fine for viewing, but sucks for photography. As the zoo is some small, again, the cages are small. Photographing through the bars is more easily accomplished with larger cages, where the animals can be some distance from the bars, allowing the lens to completely blur out the bars.

The photo of the vulture is one such shot where the enclosure was far enough away and the vulture was far enough back that I could get a good shot, completely blurring out the bars. The orangutans were a different situation, though. There was no way to view them other than through the plexiglass, which as you can see is very scratched and damaged. I was very much interested in photographing the baby who is about 7 years old. They did have lots of helpful placards indicating how long orangutans care for their young, which is until they get into their teens, nearly as long as humans!

For sure, any zoo gets higher marks from me if they have a petting zoo. Yes, I love the petting zoo. This one had several goats, a pot-bellied pig, which I got to pet, and some roosters. Of course, there were the ubiquitous squirrels mooching off of all of the animals foods, but they weren’t for petting.

I was rather surprised at the coarseness of the pig’s hair and hide. I guess that I expected it to be softer, but it was pretty high up there on the roughness scale!

The zoo had a number of other animals such as giraffe, monkeys, lemurs, an alligator, flamingos, and a pretty cool reptile house. Overall, a good experience, but a very small zoo.

I’ve not the opportunity to visit the NC zoo with the Nikon P-510, but that will happen soon enouh. Probably, my next zoo will be the zoo in LA. Might as well, since I’ll be in the area!