Caged up Leopard

[thefoodexpert]

Curious if any one can help me out. I took this photo at the Omaha zoo and want to know how I was able to blur the cage out of the picture. I would like to say I did it with a learned technique, but would really like to be able to recreate it with other animals at the zoo. Any help would be appreciated. Any other critiques, such as saturation, lighting exposure would be helpful as well.
f/5.6
1/25 sec
iso 100
225mm
canon rebel xti
55-250mm f/4-5.6 is lens

[thefoodexpert]

what do you have to do to get a response from you guys?

[VegasMike]

I'm no expert but it may be the long focal length combined with the smaller aperture. I like the shot and couldn't even tell there was a cage. As far as responses go, give it a little time. Your post was really not up that long.

Mike

[inkista]

It's the long focal length giving you a large minimum focus distance and a shallow DoF, and the subject distance from the fence. The farther away from the fence the cat is, the more you can blur the fence out. The nearer the cat is to the fence, the harder it's going to be. Similarly, the closer you are to the fence the more you can blur it out, the farther away from it you are, the harder it's going to be. Also, the size of the holes in the fence can make a difference--the denser it is and the smaller the holes, the harder it's going to be to get rid of it.

Sometimes you can do it easily:


Sometimes you can't:


Placing your lens between the links of the fence isn't a bad trick either.

Shooting through glass at the zoo tends to be more problematic than shooting through fences.