Thursday, August 23, 2007

Up close and personal


Giraffe
Originally uploaded by christyc730
This is my middle DD's hand feeding a big old giraffe. Actually, she's a teenager, in giraffe terms, not old at all. I just felt like sharing one of my very favorite pictures from our trip to South Carolina. Can you believe you can actually feed the giraffes? We also fed goats and llamas, but they were way less exciting. The whole zoo is sort of set up to look like the animals aren't really enclosed. Now I don't know about most people, but me? I like the lions behind very sturdy bars. The illusion that they're roaming free is just a little unsettling. I had to investigate and they really are behind a fence - an electrified one at that, but it was freaky to see the lions, tigers and bears just lounging around, with the appearance that if they decided to walk across the rocks they could roam the zoo.

This picture is one of my photographic screw-ups. I tried to explain it to Tom but he doesn't really get it or see the big deal. I shot this - in absolute broad daylight - at ISO 1600. Because we'd just been inside and I was taking pictures of the tropical aquariums at that ISO. They turned out great. I forgot to switch it back to 200. So beautiful outdoor pictures like this are now full of noise or grain. I'd say lesson learned, but I had just done the same thing on our first day walking around the river. I have tons of cool kudzu growing on weird things shots that are all grainy. And when we went to Punta Cana in November, I went from our hotel room (1600) to the beach without changing ISO there too. So I don't seem to have learned anything. Maybe now I will. Yeah, I'm not hopeful.


And I can't believe I forgot. Do you know what happens one week from tonight? Oh, yeah. College football, baby. Looks like I"m going to be forced to watch the team that totally whipped my team in the Sugar Bowl last year when I'd rather watch the Rutgers game, but I'm so excited that the season's starting again that I'll take what I can get.

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