Favorite ZOO photos to take - Give me ideas, please!

we like close-ups of the animals. There is a gorilla statue at our zoo we always take kid photos with - every visit. There are lovely flowers and trees and we usually get some photos of that. When we were going regularly - I tried to take enough people photos for a layout and then focused on one section of the zoo to photograph/scrap each visit - because otherwise I ended up with 200+ pics every visit all quite similar.

Depends on the zoo but pics I like are my daughter looking into the giant polar bear or hippo underwater viewing area. Feeding the goats. Eating ice cream.
Our zoo has a skyglider so it’s fun to take a picture with the camera over our feet looking down below. We also have a train and a carousel so those are good photo opps.
And I never ever pass up the opportunity to use a photobooth.

ETA: Wishing you and your family loads of fun at the zoo! 

Definitely go stand away from the kids when they are interacting with animals. Walking to another side of the enclosure allows you to take a different pic of their encounter with the animals. It's a fun way to incorporate what the enclosure looks like, what that day's feeding or enrichment looks like (especially for the themed enrichments for holidays, pride month, etc.). It's great to document your zoo's enrichment programme, animal-caretaker relationship and animals' diet.

Here's the kind of shot I mean:

Just remember to get a lot of photos with the kids in them. I take a lot of zoo photos and I noticed that when I scrap I like to put one picture of the kids on the page and then several animals.

I go to the Columbus Zoo quite a bit (or at least did before covid) and they have lots of animal sculptures. I have quite a few pictures of the kids with the sculptures. I noticed I have years of photos of the kids with the penguin sculpture. It was neat to see how the kids have grown.

Because so many of my zoo photos are from the same zoo, I'll admit to using a photo of the kids from one visit and on the same page photos of the animals from a different visit. They are the same animals, just some years they are more photogenic than others.

I think a lot of zoos have animal themed play equipment for kids to mess around on, to get the 'climbing into the tiger cage' energy out in appropriate ways... so that might be a good place to get some photos that are more about the kids and less about the animals. (I'm assuming your kiddos are little).

I love taking photos of animals but how many photos of them will you want/need in your album. It could get pretty dull for other people to look through, especially given how disappointing some zoo photos are compared to what we see on nature shows and google images. (depends on the zoo and your skills, and your mileage may vary anyway. Some people love looking through zoo photos).

Think about which camera to take if you have a choice - long lens will get you good animal closeups but might fail you when it comes to getting good shots of the kids. Phone may not zoom well enough or be fast enough for some shots. I guess you'll have lots of opportunity to test that out with multiple visits.

I have a photo of a huge crocodile at Singapore Zoo that goes with the story of it waiting until no one else was in the viewing area except me and then very deliberately snapping its tail down hard to splash me over the wall. Scared me half to death. I wish selfies had been a thing back then - I would've loved to have a photo of me to go with the story, both for a sense of scale and also because a splashed wet face selfie would've made people really stop and look at the page instead of flipping by after seeing a so-so photo of a croc. So I guess my point is to take lots of pix of the kids interacting as well as photos of the critters, then you can build good stories about the kids.

Maybe do a "favorite critter of the visit" photo for each kid each time? Or some other series that you do each visit to show the change of seasons and kids growing and other changes.

Butterfly enclosure/interaction area, if the zoo has one.

I would say most zoos have animals looked down pretty tight. If there is a chain link, get your lens in-between the links. In our zoo, more of the mellow animals can touch you if they want. We have giraffes that grab food out of your hand, wallabies that will hop right to you and penguins that waddle among people if they feel so inclined. Park yourself at those places and see if anything good happens.

Thanks so much for all of these wonderful ideas! I have a lot of animal pictures, with just animals. And you are right - how many animal pictures do I really need in my scrapbook?

I will definitely incorporate the ideas of getting my kids in the same frame as the animal (when possible, LOL) the next time we visit the zoo. Thank you once again!

LavenderLayoutLady   Thought of you when I came across this video on YouTube recently! There were some neat tips I hadn't thought of like wearing dark clothes to help with shooting through glass. 

LavenderLayoutLady Echo Park are releasing a new zoo collection in October!    It's called Animal Kingdom.