Month: September 2017

One of the surprises from our visit to the zoo was seeing the jellyfish.

Yes, jellyfish. They are part of the Discovery Bay building, which, although new to me, was apparently opened back in 1997. So I guess my last zoo visit was much longer ago than I realized.

A Jellyfish tank is like a living lava lamp. I kept thinking how fascinated Ripley would be with them floating around. I don’t think we’ll be having a tank of them at home, unless someone comes up with a synthetic simulation. A fish tank is definitely an option down the road, however. The zoo also had sea dragons, which I find incredibly fascinating.

I wasn’t able to get any decent photos of sea dragons, so today you’ll just have to settle for jellies. Speaking of today, we are heading home from our epic vacation. I hope to see some great progress on the house. (Cue the hysterical laughter here)

I did not get a lot of great photos from our zoo outing. Which is fine, because it was more of an experiment with walking around carrying my full kit of gear. From that perspective it was a success.

I did manage to sneak in a few good images here and there. These first two were taken indoors, which raised the level of difficulty.

The final image is of turkey plumage. At first, I photographed the whole bird, but turkeys are seriously ugly, so I started focusing on just the feathers. I love the iridescent feathers.

As part of our trip preparation, my husband and I went to the zoo in early September to photograph the wildlife. Our first stop was the snow monkey exhibit.

 

The snow monkeys are always pretty entertaining. I have a lot of blurry photos of them running around and engaging in crazy antics. My ratio of keepers is always low when photographing wildlife.

I haven’t been to the zoo in probably fifteen years, so I was pretty impressed by the improvements. We had such a good time, we signed up for a membership. Expect more blurry monkey photos in the future.

Of course roses aren’t the only flowers that benefit from the black and white treatment. These three beauties are all from the Annual-Perennial Garden near Lake Harriet. Meanwhile, in real time, today is the second day of our train journey from Vancouver to Banff. The scenery is supposed to be spectacular. I hope the weather cooperates. Otherwise it might be a very long day.

Roses in color are pretty, but also pretty boring. But a rose in black and white, now that is something striking. These beauties are from the Lake Harriet Rose Garden in late August.

It’s the end of the season, so the roses were getting pretty tattered. The time for flowers is ending. Winter is coming. I can’t wait.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s super creepy time. We encountered this spider while walking around Lake Harriet one morning. It was busy wrapping up a wasp. No, I didn’t get this close, I had a really long lens. This is a fishing spider, the largest spider native to Minnesota. Not poisonous, just creepy.

My false indigo plant wasn’t the only garden resident wearing a coat of tiny raindrops. A few lingering balloon flowers also caught my eye. Again, the black and white treatment really made them pop, although they were pretty nice in color as well. Meanwhile, back in real time, we’re just coming off our seven day cruise and returning to Vancouver. I hope I have lots of amazing photos to share in the near future.

When we came back from a walk one morning, I noticed that the leaves of my false indigo plant were covered with raindrops and sparkling in the sun. Talk about irresistible.

I put on my macro lens and started snapping away. The results pretty much screamed for B&W treatment, so I obliged.

 

 

 

 

 

Not a perfect theme today, but then I haven’t really staked my reputation on perfection, now have I? The first two images are cattail reeds, rendered in black and white and in focus, fancy that.

This third image sort of blew me away when I converted it to black and white. It’s not at all interesting in color, but now it looks more like a detailed drawing than a photograph. I absolutely love it.