I’ve been sitting on this photo (and others in the set) for over a year because I kept wanting to take the time to do a “proper” write-up of my trip to Uganda to see the mountain gorillas. Well, that never happened and these photos are now blocking two other major animal trips, one major non-animal trips, and a good dozen or so little trips over the last year … so I’ll just be posting a few photos along with a few observations.
First, I want to thank my friend Eleanor for inviting me along to what wound up being my first trip to Africa. I don’t think I would have done it without her invite.
Second, I want to mention that if you – like me – had largely only traveled to the tropics in Central and South America, and expected Africa to be like that, it’s really not. Africa has had a *much* longer history of human habitation and it shows. The poverty issues are very similar, as is the climate – so buildings are similar and people live similarly, but where there are large pockets of wilderness throughout Central and South America, there is very little of that where I’ve been in Africa, and what I did see seemed to largely be reconstructed and then preserved which, from an ecological perspective, is significantly different from the restoration and preservation process that I saw in Costa Rica and Peru.
I’ll have a lot more to say on this when I get to the Madagascar photos. For now, just enjoy the gorilla.
After I took this photo, he started lecturing me about low-carb, grain-free, ketogenic diets, and then offered me a free blade of grass – just so I could see what it was like.
While I would prefer that wild animals not have to live in captivity, I support zoos because, first there’s not a lot of wild left and second, this bird would not survive in the wild.
You can make an argument that this bird shouldn’t survive and that evolution punishes accident-prone individuals in the same way it does genetics that don’t fit the environment. However, you can also make an argument that humans are altering the environment more quickly that evolutionary processes can adapt and that without a compensating mechanism, we will lose the majority of our biodiversity.
Both arguments are true. Only one applies to our lives and the lives of those we care about.
Pheasant puzzling over the fact that Emerald, Agate, Amber, Ruby, Crystal, and Beryl are all considered acceptable girls’ names, but name one kid “Spodumene” and you never hear the end of it.
This frog is already tired of pumpkin spice and wishes that people would just make their coffee the traditional way – grinding the coffee cherries into a paste, combining it with animal fat, rolling them into balls, and then drying them for easy transport.
The wall is porous and low, doing a poor job of separating the turtles on one side from those on the other. However, it does meet its purpose of allowing the turtles who built the wall to feel they are better than the identical turtles on the other side.
This is another plant that is extinct in the wild. Though, unlike animals, plants can be easier to manage in captivity (or, as horticulturists call it, “in cultivation”), and has since been re-introduced.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it constantly surprises me when yellow continues to be yellow in UV. I have to imagine that there’s something weird with either the visible light filter or the sensor in the modified camera. Whatever causes it, though, I like the effect.
I wonder if any psychology studies exist around biased selection of flowers for “loves me / loves me not” decisioning. I would be unsurprised to learn that our brains pick out odd- or even-numbered petal counts based on the end result we desire.
There is a story about how having a common language helped humans to work together, achieving anything they imagined. The common belief is that the threat of these achievements caused their downfall. This is untrue.
Unlike the IR and visible range, normal camera sensors aren’t super sensitive to ultraviolet light. Additionally, glass blocks (most) UV, so you need a special lens to gather the light and focus it on the sensor. This results in a situation where you are always shooting at a higher ISO and smaller aperture than you would select for more standard photography, as well as working with a much smaller colour palette.
So, in a lot of cases, if you don’t have a dedicated UV studio (which I do not), you wind up with a grainy, tinted monochrome look.
