Grace snapped a test shot with her camera stabilized on top of a concrete pillar, then straightened up as she looked down at the little screen on the back.

Satisfied with what she saw, she smiled then glanced at me and said "Thanks for suggesting this Mara. It was a really good idea. I'm excited to get started!"

"You're welcome," I smiled back at her. "Too bad it's so crowded though."

"It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in the middle of July," Melissa reminded me. "It probably doesn't get any more crowded than this."

The three of us were at the zoo today. I figured it might be a fun place for some photography. None of us had any real assignments as such for the summer break, but I knew our profs would definitely expect us to have a portfolio or whatever of stuff we'd done while we were away from class.

It was also an excuse to hang out some more with Grace, and I figured she might not have so much time for photography if her uncle wasn't letting her do any pictures while she worked for him.

I also invited my girlfriends, since I wanted to make sure everyone got along with Grace. Except Amber was at work today so she couldn't make it, and Susan wasn't really interested in spending the afternoon at the zoo. Melissa wanted to come though, since she was in the same classes and stuff so she could use the pictures too.

Grace came over to our place and picked us up, and since she drove I paid for her admission. We'd only just got here a few minutes ago, and as soon as we were in the front gates Grace got her camera sorted out.

Instead of a purse she was carrying a camera bag over her shoulder, she had a couple different lenses along with a professional DSLR body and a bunch of other accessories. And as usual for her, she was dressed in stylish clothes and everything. She had low heeled shoes, white stockings, a knee length maroon skirt and a white blouse. And subtle make-up and her hair was all nice.

In comparison I was in my usual leggings, oversized top, and sneakers. And Melissa wore faded blue skinny-jeans, a tight pink t-shirt, and open-toe pumps.

When Grace was ready she had a big pro-quality telephoto lens on the large camera body, and the camera hung from a thick strap around her neck.

I pulled my camera out of my purse and took the lens cap off, then looped the strap around my neck. Unlike Grace I was using a consumer-model DSLR, and I just had the cheap zoom lens that came with the camera.

"That's what you brought?" Grace asked with a raised eyebrow as she stared at me and my camera.

I dropped the lens cap back in my purse and shrugged, "I also brought a spare battery and memory card. Why?"

The stylish blonde shook her head slightly, "I know you must have better lenses than that Mara. Those kit lenses are junk."

"It's fine for today," I shrugged again. "It zooms from wide-angle to telephoto, and it's nice and light."

She made a face, "It's light because it's got crap glass and it's made of plastic. Not to mention how slow those lenses are, it's what, f/5.6 at the long end? And it's just barely telephoto, you're not going to get great shots unless the animals walk right up and say hi."

"Please don't shame my lens," I pouted. "You'll hurt its feelings."

Grace gave me a mock-serious look, and my pout withered.

After a moment I grinned, "Anyways if this was an actual assignment that required a long lens or a fast lens or some other specific gear then I'd have brought something different. But it's a bright sunny day so I'm not going need anything faster than f/5.6. I'll probably do most of my shooting at f/8 or maybe f/11 right? So I don't need a fast lens. And maybe I want to get the environment as well as the animals? I don't need to count every whisker on the tiger's face or whatever, but I do want to see what they're sitting on."

She watched me for another second or two, then her expression shifted to a smile.

"I've seen some of your pictures Mara, they're not bad. And now I know it's not just luck, you've actually been paying attention in class. You sound like you know what you're doing."

I stuck my tongue out at her then grinned, "I stopped being class clown way back in January. I'm a very good student now! At least a solid C student, maybe even B-minus!"

I added, "Plus like I said this lens is light. I didn't want to exhaust myself lugging around twenty pounds of gear all day long. Did you really need to bring all that stuff?"

She grimaced, "It's not that heavy. And yeah, I wanted to cover all the bases, just in case. And if I had to choose between a cheap lens and a good one I'm going with good. You get better results with better equipment."

"I'm not convinced," I responded. "You've been listening to Professor Nichols too much. She's all about fancy equipment, and shaming the students who can't afford the pro-level stuff. I think you can get good pictures regardless of the gear. It's more important to know the camera you have than to have the most expensive gear."

"Didn't some famous photographer once say the best camera for the job was the one you had with you at the time?" Melissa asked.

We both turned to the tall sexy blonde, and Grace frowned "I thought Mara's choice was questionable, what in the world did you bring today?"

Melissa had her camera ready to go as well. Like me she didn't bring a big camera bag, she just stuffed a few things into her purse.

"Mirrorless body and a compact wide-angle 22mm f/2.0 prime lens," she replied. "Not that I specifically needed anything that fast, but I like the focal length. And this camera lens combination is small and lightweight."

Grace frowned, "A wide angle? That makes even less sense than Mara's kit lens. Didn't you bring a longer lens?"

"Nah," Melissa shook her head. "Like Mara I'm going for light-weight. Just the body, one lens, and spare battery and memory card."

Our friend seemed completely baffled by this combination. "What do you think you'll get with a wide angle lens? Because you won't be getting any decent pictures of animals. And why mirrorless? I find a DSLR is easier to frame and focus."

Melissa shrugged, "It's a bright enough day to just leave it set to f/16? With this lens that gives me enough depth-of-field to capture everything from about one and a half meters to infinity. And the wide-angle perspective makes framing my shots less critical too. Anyways, enough talking about cameras, how about we start actually taking some pictures?"

"Yeah!" I agreed. I picked a direction at random and suggested, "Let's go this way!"

My random direction turned out to be the right one, and the three of us spend the next several hours slowly making our way around the zoo's large property.

First we went through an African rainforest building then into a savanna area. Then there was a whole chunk that was set up for Canada which seemed a bit redundant, like we didn't need to pay admission to see what that looked like. Though we did get to see some animals up close that didn't tend to visit around our house. Or even at mom's house.

After that we saw a South American section and toured some fake Mayan temple ruins. Then there was an arctic tundra area which was kind of hard to sell in the middle of summer. Finally we went through the Europe and Australasia areas.

And through it all the three of us were all busy with our cameras.

That was kind of funny I thought, like anyone watching us would probably never guess we were in all the same classes or whatever.

Grace was careful and meticulous. She framed every shot, searched for the perfect place to stand, then spent time checking and double-checking her camera settings. It felt like every picture took her five minutes to set up.

As for Melissa, I actually had no idea what she was taking pictures of. She rarely raised her camera up to look at the screen, and since it didn't have a viewfinder that was the only way she could aim and focus and stuff. Most of the time it just hung around her neck in front of her big boobs. She played with it now and then, like every other time I looked she was fiddling with it, but she rarely seemed to be actually using it.

Then there was me, snapping shots of literally anything and everything that caught my eye. Like along with the animals in enclosures, I also got pictures of squirrels and birds and stuff that were just roaming free and uncaged. I got pictures of signs. Pictures of interesting bugs I spotted. Pictures of flowers and trees and whatever. Zoo staff in their zoo uniforms. And I got a few pictures of Grace and Melissa too. I even took pictures of the two guys who started following us when we were in the South America zone.

They looked like a couple college or university students, or at least they were the right age for it. Like early twenties, and even with my demonic intuition I had no idea what the two of them were doing at the zoo. It wouldn't have been my first choice as a place to go pick up girls, but that seemed to be what they were trying to do.

The guys followed us all the way from South America through the Mayan temple and into the Tundra. And every single time we stopped to take pictures they came and tried to chat us up. At first we were polite, but after like the fifth time it was just annoying.

When we finally asked them to leave us alone one of the guys was bold enough to ask if we could all meet up for a date that night. So I hooked an arm around Melissa and the other one around Grace and told the guy I was already on a date with two of my girlfriends. I punctuated that by kissing Melissa on the lips and Grace on the cheek.

That actually worked and the guys gave up and finally wandered off. And it only took Grace another five minutes or so to stop blushing.

By the time we'd made our way back to where we started it was around dinner time and we were all getting a bit hungry. There were some restaurants in the zoo but we'd pretty much done everything we wanted and taken all kinds of pictures and stuff.

"Want to come back to our place?" I asked Grace. "We can get delivery, have some drinks, chill out and stuff?"

She hesitated a few seconds before deciding "Yeah ok. Sounds like fun."

As we left the zoo Melissa asked, "Grace do you mind making one stop on the way? We're practically going right past Amber's work and she's off in about five minutes. It'd be nice if we could give her a lift?"

"Sure," she nodded.

Melissa gave her directions while I texted Amber that we were going to pick her up. We pulled into the parking lot just in time to see the cute brunette emerge from the store.

Grace sounded a little shocked as she asked, "Amber works at a sex toy shop?"

"Yeah," I grinned.

Melissa was in the passenger seat while I was sitting in the back, Amber opened the other back door and climbed in.

"Hello Grace and thank you for the lift!" the succubus cutie said as she closed the door.

Grace was blushing again as she replied, "Hello Amber, and you're welcome."

Once we all got home it was quickly determined that Grace liked sushi which meant that's what we were getting delivered. Susan and Amber were always excited for the opportunity to share their love of raw fish with new people. Meanwhile me and Melissa made sure there were some cooked dishes as well.

We got out some vodka coolers and a bottle of white wine, then while we waited for the food me and Melissa and Grace told Amber and Susan about our day at the zoo. Melissa even got out some cables so we could plug our cameras into the big home entertainment unit, and we took turns showing off some of the pictures we'd taken.

As expected, Grace had a lot of high quality shots of various animals. They were all technically good pictures, with proper focus, exposure, and framing. The animals were a bit boring though, like they weren't doing much. Sleeping, sunning themselves, or just sort of standing there.

My pictures were a lot more lively and haphazard, and I had way fewer good shots compared to the number of pictures I took in total. I put some of my faves up on the big screen though, including a great picture of a squirrel running across some grass with a big churro in his mouth. And I had a close-up of a really cool bug that was sitting on a sign for the rhinoceros habitat.

Melissa's pictures were all unique too, and me and Grace finally figured out what she was up to. She wasn't there for the animals at all, she was there for the people. She had lots of really good 'human interest' pictures, like a little crying kid being consoled by their mom or a couple people standing at a railing as they looked and pointed at whatever the animals were doing way off out of the picture to one side.

We finally took a break from looking at each other's shots when the food arrived.

As we started eating, Grace looked at me and Melissa and commented "Thank you both for inviting me today. It was a great idea, a good location, and I had a good time."

"I also want to apologize for being critical about your equipment," she added. With a nodd towards the screen she said "Seeing some of your shots from today has... I get it now. We all went to the same location, but we weren't all on the same assignment. You two both got really nice shots."

I smiled, "Thanks Grace! Your pictures are really good too. And yeah, we all have different styles and stuff. And I'm glad we all had fun."

"We should do it again some time," Melissa added with a grin.

PurpleCatGirl

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