Bamboo

Flamingo

Asian Lanterns

The Jacksonville Zoo one again had a large Asian Lantern display over the last few months. The scale and colors of these lanterns are impressive.

Trout River from the Jacksonville zoo

Dragon

Asian lanterns at the zoo

Dragon

The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens has had a wonderful exhibit this year, "Colors of the Wild"... a display of hundreds of Asian lanterns arranged in 70 different scenes. A real visual delight.  

Flamingo

Don't look too close... missed the focus on the bird but the color really did look good so I am posting anyway.

Feathers

IllumiZoo Jacksonville

We went to the LumaZoo and I took my Olympus OMD EM1 Mk II with the 12-45mm Pro f4 constant aperture lens thinking there might be a few opportunities for some shots. The displays were OK but not overwhelming. This was the most interesting view I saw.

Wanting to keep up with the wife I did not take a lot of time to check my settings so this was my first shot... mistakenly with the camera still set at ISO 200 and f stop at 5.6. The result is a unbelievable demonstration of the outstanding in-body image stabilisation of the Olympus system. The exposure time was 2.0 seconds (not 1/2 sec, a full 2 seconds). I did not brace myself more than normal but waited a long time to hear the shutter close. You can see where people and some leaves moved but much of the image is still pretty sharp.

I took several other mages after bumping th ISO, but the colors in this shot were my favorite (the colors constantly changed). To further demonstrate the sharpness I have added a 100% crop. Sure it is not perfect but still impressive.

Eye

Trunk

Taking photos at a zoo is always a challenge because there is always clutter around and behind the animals that take away from the subject. Close-ups are a a way to deal with this problem... in this case, an extreme close-up.

Behind

This is the view if you are closely following a zebra, but I think it looks like the face of some strange exotic animal.

Panda

I guess no trip to China is complete without a visit with the giant pandas.

Off topic

I have maintained this blog now for just over four years. Uploaded 522 posts. Received 20,255 page views*.

My intention has been to always upload fresh photos (taken the same day or at least less than 48 hours with only a few exceptions). And my objective has been to provide:

Observations of the trivial and unnoticed, and a photograph as a second look.

It occurs to me that there have been times that I have not been true to that objective. Posting photos of zoo animals and vacation snaps is not really "trivial and unnoticed" stuff, but I do capture what catches my eye and I find interesting... and I try to avoid the obvious.

So maybe I have not been too untrue.

I appreciate the comments I have received over the years. It is not my general policy to respond to posts, but that does not mean I do not value them. I have always maintained that this blog is for me; as a incentive to make pictures, and force me to do a little writing (in most cases very little writing).

And so I continue... now into the fifth year, sticking my neck out, and pressing on.

*Some of those visits were apparently auto generated by an evil computer in Russia, but then again Google did not count my page views during the first year.

Jungle waterfall

Zoo exhibits have gotten a lot more interesting over the last few years. And sometimes the visitors are more interesting to photograph than the residents.

How to feel like a creep

I was going to call this "Best friends" but, because I do not know these young women, and I shot the photo without their knowledge, I feel like a creep.

Anyone that covertly goes around shooting pictures of women or children is suspect.

But I could not help myself.  A photograph of two girls who dress the same, sit the same and even pick the same ice cream treat, in my opinion, makes a good picture.

So call me a creep.