I went up to Ventura a couple weeks ago as we were supposed to go on an early morning hot air balloon ride.  However, the fog rolled in and we weren’t able to go.  We were only about 3o minutes from Santa Barbara so we decided to go to the zoo instead.

More images are on Flickr.

We got to go into the giraffe barn and see the baby giraffe (who was being guarded by the two females) and hang out with the super friendly male giraffe.  He was seriously like a giant dog – all he wanted you to do was pet him and scratch his head.  After that we visited some of the fields and saw the Shire horse and the young kangaroos.

Being able to not only see these wild animals up close, but interact with them as well, is an amazing experience.  To see some more images of these amazing creatures as well as some of the other inhabitants of the zoo, check out Flickr.

The aquarium also contains an outdoor Lorikeet Forest – and seeing as I am a huge fan of birds, this was one of the best parts of the trip.  You buy this little cup of lorikeet food and walk into the enclosure and birds just fly around and land on you – it’s pretty magical.



To see more from the aquarium, visit my Flickr stream.

Sometimes it’s nice (and important) to photograph things outside of your normal repertoire – I know it always gives me a new feeling of excitement about photography when I create images I love of subjects I don’t normally have in front of my lens.  Visit flickr to see more from the zoo.

This photo was taken in 2000, with my Pentax K1000 when I was first learning the basics of everything photography (exposure, composition, negative development, and printing).  I can almost relegated the negative to the box because the image was out of focus.  However, a decade later and this image immediately grabbed my attention while looking through the negatives.  I now like the fact that it’s blurry, and that 10 years of being in a box have added some scratches – it makes it feel reminiscent of a dream, which fits my current aesthetic.  Every so often, I like going through my old images – not only do I get a chuckle out of what I was photographing back then, but it helps me remember who I was and where I came from as a photographer.

As a little side note, I also came across these photos from 2005 of my dog, Phantom.  Since he’s super cute, he deserves a little web time as well….

June 9th I was in Watts and that was the day I found a little brown puppy.  She was laying in the sun, emaciated and not moving.  She had cuts and bite marks on her face and she didn’t make a sound or struggle as I picked her up.  She lay on the front seat and barely moved the entire drive back to Venice (which took extra long because of ridiculous traffic and freeway closures).  My plan was to bring her to the vet, they’d get some fluids in her and make her healthy and I’d bring her home and take care of the rest.  Again, my naivety kicked in.

After doing some preliminary blood work and other tests, the vet called and told me the puppy had parvo.  She was given an 85% chance of survival.  She was on an intense antibiotic treatment, in addition to being on two IV’s – one for fluids and one for vitamins.  They started treatment the afternoon of June 9th.  I would visit her every day, which meant putting on scrubs and gloves if I wanted to touch her or pick her up.  I brought her toys and talked to her but she would rarely, if ever lift her head and only follow my movements with her eyes.  On more than one occasion I would leave the vet’s office in tears – with the thought of her dying without ever knowing what it was like to be loved by someone.  By the 15th, she was still in isolation and hadn’t eaten yet.  The vets were concerned with not only her physical state but her mental state as well – she was a depressed little puppy, and she was going downhill.  It just seemed like she had lost the will to live.

On the 16th, while I was at the vet they asked me to try and feed her some baby food – just to get something into her system.  At this point they had tried everything – a variety of both dry and wet dog foods, cold cuts, and force feeding – all of which she either turned away from or threw up after.  They gave me a jar of $0.69 turkey baby food.  I stuck my gloved finger into the jar and then under the puppy’s nose and her ears perked up a little as her tongue came out and licked the food off my finger.  I was beyond excited!  She ended up eating about 1/3 of the jar before deciding she didn’t want anymore.  Between the 17th and the 22nd (when I brought her home), she continued to eat and get more energetic.  It’s hard to believe that a tiny jar of turkey baby food ended up being the thing that gave her a will to live – even though I like to tell myself that it was me.

Now not only is she on her way to becoming a healthy puppy but she has a home, a big brother (in the form of my 5-yr old husky mix, Phantom), more toys than she knows what to do with, and people who love her.  And I no longer have that little girl wish of finding a puppy while I’m walking down the street.

After feeding the animals, we stopped by the lorikeet exhibit to feed the birds.  It’s basically a big open area (covered by netting) and the birds fly around and land on you.  It’s the kind of place that’s probably pretty terrible if you have a fear of birds, but pretty magical if you don’t.

You can see more images from my trip to the Nashville Zoo in my portfolio.