It turns out that Missouri is rather quite humid and, when it rains, the front of the lens can get covered in tiny little water droplets. This is roughly equivalent to a fog filter which I never had until I took this shot and decided that I quite liked the effect. I haven’t taken the time to really experiment with it yet though.
Last year, I took a trip to Missouri for work. As always, I went to the St. Louis Zoo because it’s a pretty awesome zoo. What I did not anticipate was that 1) the zoo would close early … at noon … to prepare for a big event and 2) that it would be pouring rain. Now, I was prepared for the rain because I always keep a camera raincoat in my bag, so my camera was kept nice and dry. Camera rain coats work by using an extremely tight weave of ripstop nylon that is treated with a water repellent.
Ducks stay dry by using an extremely tight layering of feathers coated with a thin layer of oil that serves as a water repellent.
Humans stay dry by having the good sense not to go out in the rain.
I got thoroughly soaked and it took me a good two hours for my clothes to dry out.
I’ve been trying to get a shot like this for years. The only thing spoiling it is that the scorpion’s claws are too close together and are blocking his “face”.
I declined to reach in and reposition them.
Only half of this bench is safe to sit on. Most places would just replace the whole thing, but zoos are all about recycling and re-use, so there you go.
Trust is hard.
Peacocks know when you’ve gotten bored at the zoo and equipped your fancyass art lens. That’s when they start posing.
This is a green araçari. This is not, as most of the zoo signs say, a green “aracari”. I mean, completely ignoring the fact that of all the colours this bird is, green isn’t one of them, “araçari” vs “aracari” matters because one way is correct and the other one makes you sound like a biologically and linguistically uneducated idiot … which is fair if it’s true, but not at all fair because some sign designer somewhere couldn’t be bothered to use the damn character map tool. It’s right there in operating system, people! I’m not asking people to memorize unicode character sequences here. Just know how to pronounce the words before you put them on the sign.
Sheesh.
Those stupid picnic group party games that you are pushed into through peer pressure aren’t limited to humans.
Monkeys are really quite particular when it comes to selecting guitar picks.
“Pardon me, but have you heard the good word?”
.
.
.
“It’s ‘gambol’. I just think it’s a really good word and more people should use it, so I’m going door to door to let people know.”
The goose paths are well established in the abandoned/unused enclosures at the zoo.
Sometimes a shadow doesn’t match its source very well.
He had been so looking forward to it. He’d crafted the perfect moment. The weather was warm and slightly breezy. The hill had overlooked the lake. He’d waited for her to arrive. They were going to dine and then he was going to ask her the question he’d been wanting to ask for months now. He had the ring. Everything was set for the perfect picnic.
He’d planned for everything … except for her to so hungry. Now he sits and ponders his error.
He should have packed something more substantial than honey, sassafras and moonshine.
Mammals are, frankly, lazier than amphibians. When an amphibian wants this type of colour camouflage, they spend millions of years working on it. Mammals just spend a few hundred years and invent dyes.
I took this photo over a year ago and I am still baffled at how a pupil can cast a shadow.
Horseshoe crabs have stayed largely unchanged for millions of years.
At some point in the past, one of them evolved this form and all the rest of them were like “Daaaayum! Dude! That is the *perfect* look!”
The really rich lizards have money to spend on iris-jazzing.
Somewhere in this world, there is a group of genetic engineers working to create the animals that do not exist but that we all wish did. These “Seussists” are not yet public, but every once in a while, one of their creatures escapes their lab and is “discovered” to slowly adjust our level of what we find acceptable in species.
Eventually these guys will be available in long haired blue/green varieties.
Tonight, you shall dream of hippo feet.
It’s really hard to be a fish nerd. I mean, sure, they have to use wax pencils when they play D&D, but most books and computers don’t even work under the water.
They must do a lot of LARPing.