Friday, July 06, 2007

Lowry Park Zoo


My cat usually makes a poor subject for my photographic endeavors, though I managed to get this shot of her shortly after I bought my new Sony A100 digital SLR camera. Looking for a place to practice, I went to Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo July 4. See a sample below.



I was disappointed with the zoo, though some of the letdown was probably my own fault. The middle of a July afternoon in Florida is not when animals wearing fur coats are going to be at their most active. None of the big cats made a public appearance.

The aviary was a highlight. You just go into a big caged room and you can get face to face with the birds, called lorikeets. They're native to Australia, according to the sign inside the aviary. If you bribe them with nectar (sold for $2 for a tiny cupful), they'll happily lap it up while sitting on your hand. Their comfort with humans was how I got so close to them.

The bald eagle shot I took from farther away than it may appear. I cropped a lot of it out to feature his head. The young chimpanzee appeared to be taste testing bird droppings on the rock. The gecko was not a zoo exhibit. The place is crawling with them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude these are great! I surely made a mistake buying the minolta.

John said...

Your camera is fine.

I took more than 200 pictures. Some were bound to come out good by sheer dumb luck.

The colorful bird ones were taken from close up inside the zoo's aviary.