In Wildlife Safari, Oregon, visitors can drive through the preserve to see native and exotic animals. This emu actually walked up to the car window. It was terrifying. These birds are enormous, and its red eyes looked very angry. Fortunately, we escaped with our lives and later saw American bison, a brown bear snoozing, lions, camels, and paid an outrageous price for an elephant to wash my car.
My hope is to return someday.
A little more than a year ago, I became an auntie. During three visits from across the country I have photographed Ellie and her mama several times. Every few months, she looks like a different person. Taller, from fuzz to a full head of hair. But those eyes, they are always the eyes of my Ellie.
Since my mama also lives more than 2000 miles from the little one, I decided to assemble these wall pieces bearing four photographs of her precious granddaughter. Essentially I covered book board with bark-toned, luscious handmade Japanese paper, and layered a brown toned print over printmaking paper. On the back are two layers of book board with a notch cut out for hanging.
Seems like I will have to make a couple of pieces of my own, as the wall will be entirely empty after I package these up and mail them off to my beloved mama.
Some photographs or groups of photographs are thoughtful, expressive, emotional. Some images capture a decisive moment, while others are composed painstakingly and refined by many hours of processing. However, at the root of the emergence of photography was the intent to record objectively. And some projects are simply that; records. This one was a challenge to record whatever I was doing or seeing at 8am, 3pm, and 8pm for several days. Now this was a couple years ago, and my daily doings have entirely changed: I graduated, got married, and now work early in the mornings (instead of hating mornings and considering 1:30am an early bedtime). So this was a record of things I did and saw two years ago, but I wonder how vastly different it might look if I took on this challenge again….
Day 1.
Day 2.
Day 3.
This fellow’s name is Peter, who looked exactly like the character in Beatrix Potter’s illustrated books–minus the blue jacket.
Today is Tuesday, which is usually hiking-adventure-day. Instead, we spent the morning walking around the Phoenix Zoo. In the door at 7am, we took advantage of those few hours in the morning when it is not too hot, not too crowded, and the light is not so harsh. Since I ended up with more than five hundred exposures, I will post several batches as I process the images.
First, a couple of birds and some kind of deer that had no visible name plates.
Prairie Dogs: These little rodents were incredibly entertaining. They greet each other with kisses and have big bellies that squish all sorts of ways. It was breakfast time, so everybody was out chowing down on veggies, then stretching out for a nap.
Burrowing Owl
Golden Eagle
Iguana
A few minutes ago, I happened upon this image from spring break last year. My (then) fiance and I drove to California to spend some time with my uncle and family who were also visiting. One day we decided to go see Chinatown. Apart from the LA traffic, we found everything you might expect: gift shops, trinket shops, restaurants, more gift shops. While browsing each shop down the street I saw a teeny pet shop and jumped in right away. This little place had so many different birds and mice and ferrets, I was just giddy. There were a bunch of baby bunnies, all snuggled up with each other–I could hardly handle it.
But there was something terribly wrong. The shop was crammed with pets. Their cages were grimy and rusty. The baby bunnies were in a fish tank sized container that had severe cracks. They were all snuggled because there was no room to move around. As in this snapshot from my phone you can tell they are unbearably adorable, and in an equally unacceptable environment. I considered buying one, just to save it from the too-warm room and crowded pen. Who knows what they were being fed, there was no hay anywhere in sight…But I had my own rabbit at home to worry about. Who knows what kind of deseases these little fur balls might have? And I had nothing to transport a baby bunny, and my full grown rabbit might not have been compatible, maybe aggressive even.
All this, and now I still wish I had bought one. But that would have supported the store that mistreated these vulnerable animals. Instead I should have immediately called animal control, someone who had the authority to remove the animals from that environment. With that, I post this image in shame but with the resolve to never pass by the inhumane treatment of animals without action.
Forgive me, little ones.
Only went a mile and a half because it was too hot and I was running low on water, at 8 am. Took me twenty minutes to find a parking spot because there was such a crowd at the trailhead. I finally caught someone leaving and snagged a spot, filled up on water and granola bars before venturing out. Luckily the rest of the morning went quite smoothly.
