Zoo time!!

For my birthday this year, and since it was a big one, I asked a few friends to come with me to the zoo. I brought along my camera, thinking it would be a good place to practice my skills. Being lazy, and honestly not thinking about the situation, I brought the wrong lens. I brought my 18-55 zoom lens, which for as far back as the zoo has the animals (or you could think of it as to keep the people away from the animals), it was simply the wrong lens. The focal length was much too short, but I figured I would work with aperture and shutterspeed. I finally got looking at the pictures today (we went on Saturday) and I was very surprised to find that with a little bit of cropping, the pictures were actually half way decent. I am learning more and more, you can't just take a picture - you have to compose it. You have to think every step through - aperature, ISO, shutterspeed, exposure control, and make sure you focus the picture. I am trying to think more carefully and get faster at working through all of those steps.