Category: Observation

Fruit Stripes and Milk – A Snack of Indy Zoo

It’s time for another post and true to form so far this year we’re sticking with the mammals from our Indianapolis Zoo Trip from (hang head low) back in 2011.  But first a quick moment for some back patting.  Last post was a bit of a milestone here at LifeIntrigued.   Second guessing myself, maybe I should have gone with “Kudos to Me” for the title.  What milestone do I speak of?  Well, with the release of the last post I’ve now officially made 400 posts over the last 5 years and some change (..crowd goes wild, balloons fall from the sky, t-shirts shot into the crowd).  Kind of makes me chuckle thinking about a certain brother proclaiming to the blogosphere how he was beating me on the post count for this year.. trust me, that little issue has been remedied.

Okay, enough fanfare.  Time to get to the subject of this post.  Correct that, the subject’S’ of the post.  It’s a bonus day for our readers who get TWO mammals to look at.  The first one is an animal that always brings me back to my childhood.  Anybody out there remember Yipes?  If so, you will understand the title.

For those that do not know, Yipes is the mascot for Fruit Stripes gum.  Technically it is a zebra but those clever marketing people over at Beech Nut gave it colored stripes.  These same stripes were replicated on the gum itself.  Once again I learned something interesting from our friends over at Wikipedia.  They state the gum was actually wrapped in edible paper.  I do not remember that at all.  What I do remember quite readily is a) how flavorful the individual pieces were and b) that flavor lasting about 3 chews.  A deep psychoanalysis would probably reveal this being the source of my current compulsion to always chew two pieces of gum at a time.  Yipes pretty much makes our specimen pretty boring.  Plain old black and white.  In case the suspense is killing you, I firmly believe that it’s black stripes on a white body but this is opposite to the current scientific evidence – this being a clear government conspiracy to hide the truth.  The picture above shows the reason for this belief – the underbelly has large white sections that look more like a canvas (see back of leg and the section right below the neck).  During post processing I decided to leave the bird in- gave the impression it was standing it’s ground against the behemoth.  Although, would have preferred to have taken the time to get the whole bird in the original shot.  The Zebra ears also mimic the “I’ve got my eyes on you” look.  While I’m at it, what is your take on this head shot? –  this one has the full head, one complete leg and enough body to make the connection from the neck to the start of the leg.  Does the single leg give an odd feeling .. like something is missing or is it quirky enough to be captivating?

And then we have the wall mount shot.  With the ears pulled back a little more it gives a less sad feeling.

Hit the jump to read more facts about the Zebra and see the bonus mammal!

Continue reading Fruit Stripes and Milk – A Snack of Indy Zoo

Kudus to You

It’s Mammaltastic around Lifeintrigued these days.  Unlike the last two, this particular animal may not be familiar to you.  I say that because it was definitely not something I could name off the top of my head and confirmation why I need to get these shoots posted sooner.  After a year and half I had completely purged my brain of what this antlered thingy was.  That means hours of surfing the internet trying to find a similar image or at least a lead on what family it belonged to.  I recommend not starting out your search with “Horny Mammals”.  You just might blush at the results…or at least give you a chuckle.  A few refined searches narrowed it down a bit but having only the head and a little bit of torso really doesn’t give much to go on.  Eventually I came across this very helpful website called Buzzle (link here).  To be honest, that site has a wide variety of topics – seems to be an answer-all for any of your questions.  My question – “what animals roam around Africa?”  Sure enough, they had a very nice list with … wait for it … PICTURES.  At least now I could narrow it down. At first it looked like it was a Waterbuck but they lacked the hair down the spine and under the neck and chin – would have been tougher to think up a clever title for that one anyway.

About half way down there it was!

Want to take a guess as to what it is?   If you said Antelope I’ll give you an ‘A’ for effort.  It is actually one of the largest in the Antelope family.  This species is called the Greater Kudu.  Once again, The Beast was bringing the animal front and center causing me to work to get the composition the way I wanted it.  The most interesting aspect of this animal is the unique antler formation and therefore wanted to make sure that was captured in the shot, but leaving enough of the body so it didn’t look like a trophy room mount.  It took me awhile, but I think I pulled it off.  Thanks to the large aperture the background was thrown somewhat out of focus (could have blurred that out a little more in the digital darkroom, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk of screwing up the sharpness of the Kudu.

How about some facts.  This particular specimen is older than 6.  How do I know this?  Turns  out (ha pun) the Kudu does not develop its full two and a half twists in the antlers until at least that age.  Wikipedia also points out they get their first twist around two.  That must help on the dating front – my generation had to use the smallpox vaccination scar to get a rough idea of someone’s age (note, the US stopped giving that in the ’72 time frame having eradicated the disease).  Oh, and I know it is a male since the females are hornless.

Hit the jump to read the rest of the post!

Continue reading Kudus to You

Bear in Mind it was High Sun

It seemed appropriate to go with this topic for today’s post in light of the fact that our 2nd Amendment is under attack by clueless liberals who do not even bother to understand the intent of our Founding Fathers before pushing their own ridiculous agendas. The right to BEAR arms is not about how many bullets it takes to kill a deer (I am especially intrigued by the congressman – talking to you Franken – who give this asinine argument for why we only need 7 bullet magazines) The 2nd Amendment isn’t about hunting and it isn’t about sport and if you think it is then you are not qualified to be setting policy. Want something to think about? Consider what these pro-gun control advocates would do if their precious 1st Amendment was under scrutiny.

On a much lighter note… Hey look at the cute bear pictures!

Yes, we are once again back at the Indianapolis Zoo.  Unlike the elephant, this time we bring you a true carnivore – in fact one of the top carnivores in the animal kingdom food chain.  Okay, if we are splitting hairs they are technically omnivores, but I doubt they go around commenting on how much they prefer berries to the taste of raw meat and fish.  I’ve had the privilege of seeing these creatures in the wild and it is quite breathtaking (link here).  They exude a true sense of power as they lumber along that commands a high degree of respect.  I felt a little remorse watching it simply pace back and forth within its exhibit knowing their brothers were enjoying freedom in one of or Nation’s most beautiful parks – one must admit we have come a long way in our treatment of animals  in captivity and clearly this one was not outwardly suffering.  I am not a bear psychologist but guessing there is a call to the wild buried deep in there somewhere.  My utmost appreciation for letting us experience what it is like to be around one but out of harm’s way.  You will never catch me this close to one out in Yellowstone!

Hit the jump to read and see more pictures of the Grizzly!

Continue reading Bear in Mind it was High Sun

Sporting Some Junk in the Trunk

How’s the new year treating ya’ out there?  I’ve been busy as hell thanks in large part to my wife.. which will, of course,  ultimately become a future project post.  The good new is some of my time has been spent doing processing work for this month’s posts… and the next month’ s and the next and th.. you get the point.  Damn thee convictions, damn thee.  As a result of going back through last year’s posts for the year end summary it became very apparent that my photography outings were significantly outpacing my posts.  This backlog tends to weigh on me heavily.  With the new year comes a renewed emphasis to get this back under control  First on the platter is the Indy Zoo trip we took back … uh hmm July 2011.  I hope you like animal pictures, because you are going to get a healthy dose in the upcoming months.  I’ll try to sprinkle in some other topics as  relief.

Let’s start with the mammals – laaaarrrggge mammals.  Interesting enough, I’ve never really had an affinity towards these creatures and after years and years of analysis it suddenly clicked “why” while prepping these pictures.  How about I leave some suspense there.   This happened to be one of those posts where the title came before the content!  I thought it was clever but that left the challenge of finding something that made it cohesive to the subject layout (again, probably goes unnoticed but we do think about the presentation around here).  Luck would have it, we have a winner.

This folks is the one and only picture in the shoot that actually showed junk in the elephant’s trunk.  Redeemed!  We had the Beast with us on this shoot which was quite handy for some of the animals, but there is a downside to the Beast.  It does a great job of pulling the smaller animals into the frame, but on the huge animals, you have to start picking and choosing what you want in the composition.  I guess the other option is to foot zoom half  way across the zoo but forcing that many people to keep out of your shooting angle is quite the chore.  With the exception of some helpful angles on the little ones, all of these pictures only have a portion of the animal in the frame.   On a pure guess, the following specimen looked the oldest of the group.

It is also the only one that had the more brown coloring but not sure that really plays into the identification game.  Based on what I can tell from our friends over at Wikipedia, there are really only two types of elephants.  There are the Asian elephants an the African elephants.  The Asian ones have a more of a crown above their heads where the African species have more of a gradual slope.  Survey says… this is an African elephant.  In fact, all of my pictures turned out to be of African elephants.  Note, these also appear to have longer trunks than their Asian brothers – come for the pictures, stay for the gray matter filler.  Check out the caps on the tusks.  I have no idea if that was a result of poachers before it made its way to the zoo, a result of age or a safety precaution.  Let’s not rule out the option of just elephant bling – they’re not exactly the prettiest things to look at.

The next picture is probably  my favorite of the group.  Sure, everyone has seen the standard ham shots of elephants – looking all cool-like with their trunk, tusks and floppy ears.  What you don’t see much of is the camera shy shots.

On second thought, that might actually be elephant sign language for “Hey you with the obnoxiously big glass, take a hike or I’ll call my big shoe’d friends”  Harsh!

Hit the jump to see more pictures read the rest of the post!

Continue reading Sporting Some Junk in the Trunk

A Well Hung Peter

Spent the morning hauling water and figured I’d pop out a post while taking a quick break from the cold.  Probably the most overlooked part of any of my posts is the title.  There is actually a lot of time spent on coming up with an appropriate title – don’t worry, this is time is usually spent while doing some mundane task around the house (laundry, mopping, cleaning windows, taking out the trash, bathing the boys etc. etc.)  or while in the car trying to pass the time.  It is rare when there are so many options but with a name like Peter Lik you can have a lot of fun – Alex, I’ll take “Cheap Laughs for 100 please”.  If you recall from a previous post (link here), we (translated my wife) bought a picture from the gallery of Linda’s favorite photographer.  What I did not mention in that post was how concerned I was about actually getting the picture hung on the fireplace – there’s a reason there hasn’t been anything put there to date – I had no idea how to accomplish that.  This feeling of concern was significantly amplified when the picture showed up at the house.  There was no more time to push it off, Linda was pretty insistent about it being displayed soon after arriving.  Adding to that pressure, we had a Christmas dinner scheduled at our house a few days later.

Might as well jump to the Peter Lik money shot (I crack myself up).

Hit the jump to read how all this went down

Continue reading A Well Hung Peter

Santa Lost a Cylinder

Sorry folks, but this post is not for the squeamish (or for kids with Elf on a Shelf “narcing” on their every move to Santa).  Over the years, I’ve made a few posts that might have concerned some people and assuredly typed out  a few sentences that might have made a few readers raise their eyebrows.  Some of that is by accident, or more likely intentional (always keep your readers guessing).  Most of the time someone will call me on it and make some clever comment…. and then there are those times it just kind of slide by apparently unnoticed.  Those are the situations that are most intriguing to me.  Has my reader base defected? maybe it was too subtle or worse, readers are starting to associate these situations as “normal” for me (eesh).  As prime example, take a previous post on the Halloween decorations (link here).  In that post I was recounting how difficult it was to get ready for our annual Halloween party due to all the activities that were swirling around at the time.  Let’s recall the following sentence from that post, “Oh, on Tuesday I had to dispose of a body… but more on that in an upcoming post.”  I distinctly remember hashing over that sentence a couple of times and was kind of feeling bad since it was an obvious ploy to generate more comments to pad the year end summary – that is due shortly.  Guess how many comments I received as a result of that specific line?  20? 10? 5?  NOPE  – NADA.  Apparently disposing of a body is less controversial than letting my wife become a Peter Lik groupie.  The good news is this post is the referred to “upcoming post” and therefore I can set the record straight.

I’m not kidding about the queasy nature of this post so if you can’t stand a little bit of gore I recommend shielding your eyes – maybe read it through your fingers to cut d0wn on the exposure – don’t forget to hold your nose at the same time.  Proceed whenever you feel comfortable.

This all started when I was scouting out the woods for the Haunted Trail.  Everything was in fairly good shape.  There were a few trees down that had to be moved to the side, branches that had to be trimmed of their summer growth over the walkway and of course a mowing and weed whacking session to make it easier to navigate.  While mowing the last section of the trail I noticed a foul stench emanating from the direction of the stream.  There are some smells that immediately trigger memories (some good.. some bad … some veeerrry bad).  In this case, the olfactory perception was triggering the latter.  My mind immediately went to the dreaded coyote incident (link here).  A week before the party and there’s a dead coyote on the property.  The mind started clicking away – could I get by with just saying it was part of the Haunted Trail – added realism?  Maybe it will just dry out before the party and go away on its own.  As much as I wanted to believe the first option, the thought of horrifying children who might stumble on the dead carcass eliminated it.  The second option was debated some, but the fact was the dead coyote from before lasted quite a while and it was staying pretty warm out.   Crap, only option left was to deal with it – so off I went looking for it.  The coyote assumption had improperly prepared me for what I found.  20 feet off the path I was mowing and directly on the banks of the stream was THIS:

If you have a strong stomach, feel free to hit the jump to read how this all turns out

Continue reading Santa Lost a Cylinder

The Brent Chapman of the Birding World

Merry Christmas everyone!  I was sitting around on Christmas Eve and wondering what a fitting topic would be for this festive day.  I decided I’d hold off a little more before I go off on the latest gun restriction talks and it didn’t seem right to post a recent experience with a deer (it is pretty gruesome and didn’t want Santa to get offended).  There’s the Hank Williams Jr. recollection (NOT) and I am not ready yet for either the Wisconsin trip post from earlier in the year and much to soon to go with the recent Vegas birding shots.  What to do, what to do.  Hey, nothing says Christmas like a super fisher!  Okay, it is really a gift to me to help pad some year end stats but it actually has a tie in to the last post on Allerton.

While processing the statue shots from the Allerton Park shoot (link here), a pleasant surprise caught my eye.  In the middle of shooting the Loch Ness shots a familiar sound emanating out from the nearby woods.  A sound that caught my attention having heard it for the first time a few weeks prior to making the trip up to Monticello.  Imagine, if you will, a long rattle – somewhat like a cricket on steroids.  Immediately the Beast was reoriented to the location of the sound in hopes the source would show itself.  A few minutes later a now “familiar” crested blue bird flew out of the woods and took a position in the trees along the bank of the pond.    “Familiar” may be  a strong word since it was still pretty new to me, but to my credit I had taken over 200 pictures at the first encounter.  You kind of get to know a bird after staring at it for that many shots.  The original shoot was at Jubilee Park and those shots tended to come out nicer so let’s lead with those.

And here it is:

If this is new to you, you might assume a common Blue Jay from the similar coloring.  However, the beak may be throwing you off… and if not, it should be.  That beak is HUGE!.  Add to that the overall large relationship of the head to the rest of the body pretty much eliminates the Jay.  This is actually a Belted Kingfisher and a brand new bird to the Blog.  This is one of those birds that is supposed to be common to our surroundings, but was never in the right spot at the right time.  That is until Linda and I took a quick run over to Jubilee Park to see what was hanging out around the pond. This is becoming a hot spot for new birds for us.  If you recall, this is where we shot the Green Heron (link here).  Not only were we at the right spot.. we had the Beast.

Without the Beast this would have probably been a missed opportunity.  Our subject (a male) was keeping its distance and really didn’t appreciate me being in his hunting area.  He would give me about 4 shots before fluttering off to some other branch.  Even with the large glass the bird was buried in tree branches for most of the time throwing the auto-focus all over the place.  The entire time I was shooting it, my assumption is it had a white eye and the light was working in my favor giving a nice glint.  During post processing, it became apparent that this was wrong.  The Kingfisher actually has a black eye – the white is just part of the base of the beak coloring.  This is why you never trust the LCD screen on the back.  Although it could not be seen while looking through the glass, the culprit for the focus walking was the twig positioned right in front of the bird – again, too small to see in the eyepiece or the LCD screen.  The shot below gives a good view of the eye in relationship to the white spot.

Some interesting facts.  The female Kingfisher actually has a burnt orange band on the belly – odd since the male is usually the more colorful of the sexes.  They are very common in North America (could have fooled me). They are year round in our neck of the woods (Illinois).  According to our friends over at Wikipedia, they actually nest in the banks of streams/ponds making an upward slanting tunnel to help guard against flooding.  As you would expect they carry a Least Concerned conservation status – again, hard to believe this was the first time I’ve really come in contact with one.

Hit the jump to see more shots of the Belted Kingfisher

Continue reading The Brent Chapman of the Birding World

A Day in the Land of Odd

Happy Holidays everyone!  With all the activities as of late it has been difficult to find time to get out the remaining posts of the year. .. and by activities that includes tonight’s accomplishment of finally drumming through every single song on my Xbox for Rock Band 3 on pro-drums – including all three cores (RB1/2/3)  expansion packs (LEGO, AC/DC) and too many downloaded songs to admit in public.  Since I had a few minutes to spare while resting the arms, I thought I’d crank one out that I did the prep work on just a few days ago.  While going through my list of ideas I noticed one that has been on there for a looooong time.  To be specific, that would be like 1 year and 7 months.  This is actually a mixture of shots taken by both myself and Linda although not entirely sure which is which so for the most part assume equal credit.

So, back in May of 2011, Linda and I had the opportunity to visit an old friend of mine called Allerton Park and Retreat Center near Monticello IL (link here).  If you were fortunate to attend the University of Illinois, it is likely you are familiar with this location as it is a nice place to get out and away from the grind.  My brother Ron first introduced me to this place while he was going to school there.  The best thing about this place is that it’s more than just a place for some peace and quite – it is also a rich environment for creativity and a godsend if you are in to “photographing the odd”.  The site was the estate of one Robert Allerton who was heir to his father Samuel’s fortunes from his association with the First National Bank of Chicago and many stockyards including the Union Stockyards of Chicago.  Robert was passionate about art becoming an avid collector and philanthropist.  This passion resulted in his estate becoming  full of eccentric sculptures collected during his worldly travels.  Robert was also heavily involved with the University of Illinois along with his adopted son John Gregg.  I was not aware of this before reading up on Wikipedia and their official site, but it was actually deeded to the university back in 1946 (one of the largest gifts to date to the university).  I’ll let you read up on the history of this place, but hands down, if you are looking to spend the day behind the camera .. this is an excellent place to start.

First of all, there are statues all over the property that are stunning in both their size and subject.  Take for example this one.

I believe it is called Death of the Last Centaur.  Guess this is a good time to mention that a large majority of these images were SHOPPED.  I admit it (unlike Peter Lik) but the digital darkroom is one of my favorite parts of photography.  Unlike with wildlife photography I take a little more liberty in landscape shots – the animal world is a little more picky on maintaining the “natural” coloring of the species.  I wanted to learn some advanced techniques and the shots from Allerton provided a fertile ground for that.  I’m guessing from the wide angle shot that Linda actually took the one above – otherwise I would have had to hiked about 1/4 mile away to get that coverage with Beast.   The shot below shows the tighter ones I was shooting.  My goal was to fade out the background so the statue would pop a little more.  A lot of work with masks and filter brushes in Lightroom got me here.

Not bad, the sharpness of the status stands out better than in the first shot.  Some color manipulation accelerated the timing about 5 months into the fall.  The next task was to try my hand at some B&W and tone manipulation.  This is harder than initially thought.

The background did not lighten up as much as desired – need to read up a little more on the Dodging and Burning in the tool but the statue’s coloring came out close to expectations – it would have popped a lot more on a lighter background.  Maybe next time I’ll see if there is an angle that takes some of the trees out.

Hit the jump to see other shots from Allerton…

Continue reading A Day in the Land of Odd

Extirpating Biased Journalism

Since apparently I have some undefined plague wreaking havoc on Peoria, figured I’d take a little bit of time to get a post out there for December. This happens to be one of those cases where the prep time for the post significantly exceeds the actual post effort. The post really originated back in August do to becoming completely disgusted with the level of journalism these days. Well, to be honest, this might not be so much new as just me becoming over sensitive to it and with the election in full swing I was probably a little more tuned in to it. One of my hard fast rules is I NEVER read a story with emotionally charged words in the title. You know, those charged words that are intentionally placed either to excite their audience to reading their drivel or meant to demean whatever the subject happens to be.

Now take for example this article on 10/4/12:

specifically Mitt spoke forthrightly.  Now this isn’t the headline cap, but if they had used “Mitt Spoke Forthrightly During the Debate”, what kind of emotion would have that generated with you?  Is it enough to get you to click on the link to find out the details, does it reveal what position the author is taking on the subject?  Maybe it feels a little snooty.  To be honest I have no problem with it and since my intent was to learn about the debate anyway I’m likely going to hit the link anyway and, more importantly, I’ll be able to form  my own opinion of how it went.

Okay, now from 10/25/12

One dingy dingy, two dingy dingy, three dingy dingy.  If anything, this is a de-emotion word.   To Ding – To Dent (something).  Traditionally implying something small, trivial if you will.  By interpretation,  whatever the Register did to Obama was discarded as meaningless.  Guessing this had something to do with them having the audacity to cast Obama in bad light so the use of that headline by the media is expected.

Time to step it up a bit. Next up is 9/21/12:

To Hammer – Hit or beat (something) with a hammer or similar object. Now I find it extremely difficult to believe that a group of Senators was chasing down Obama and beating him with a hammer (or similar object).  Now again, since I would never read an article with such a charged headline I can only speculate but the little caption below it indicates they …wait for it … gave speeches.  More truthful would be The GOP Hurled Words at Obama.

The bloodshed continues after the jump

Continue reading Extirpating Biased Journalism

Something Interesting Happened on the Way to the Venetian

This is quota thing is going to put me in an early grave. With the new year coming there might have to be some slight modifications. But that is over a month away so back on the computer to finish up the last post of the month. As with the previous post, this one is courtesy of our trip to Vegas although this one isn’t about wildlife photography…. rather landscape photography.

You may not know that Linda is a Peter groupie.. EEK! backspace backspace backspace… start again. You may not know that Linda is a big fan of Peter Lik. That actually doesn’t sound a whole lot better but before your mind goes somewhere it shouldn’t, Peter Lik is a pretty famous outdoor photographer. Linda has been following his work for sometime now likely due to the association with her own interest in landscape photography. If photographers can have groupies, Linda could be the president of his fan club. She watched all his shows on the Weather Channel (long story) and an avid follower of his blog until it shriveled up and died (probably got quota’d out hehehe). Now days she is on his mailing lists and forums to keep up on the latest releases and happenings in the photography world. The fact that he considers Vegas the headquarters of the Lik enterprise was very much on Linda’s mind leading up to our trip out there – a strange fact seeing as he is the son of Czech parents and raised in Australia. She even managed to find all of his galleries out there as well as the address for his corporate offices. Clearly there was going to be treks through some snooty studios and a road trip in our future.

Since we were staying at the Palazzo we decided to head over to the Venetian gallery first. Sure enough, they had his classic works as well as some new pieces adorning the walls. I rarely openly comment on the works of professional photographers in fear of offending someone or ballooning egos, but in this case, I’ll make an exception. His work is quite stunning!  This especially holds true if you appreciate landscape photography and a proprietary printing process that makes his images pop right out of the frame. I really can’t explain what it is about his shots, but if you are not impressed when walking in his galleries you might want to have your pulse checked. True to our other experiences in gallery stores, we were quickly greeted by one of the sales associates. The next two+ hours was quite the event.

We would approach a picture, the salesman would start to say something about it and Linda would quickly proceed to explain the entire background on it – where it was shot, how it was shot, when it came out, in some instances the camera he used and what hat he was wearing at the time. The associated was damn impressed – me, more worried she was going to quit her day job, buy a jeep and start camping out at remote sites Peter was planning to shoot. During the course of the walkthrough, we also learned a tremendous amount which included insights into how some of the shots were taken (that Linda was not aware of), some advanced information on some release cycle changes and the logarithmic pricing based on percentage of the total release size. I recall from other gallery walks that the staff was continually throwing out percentage numbers and had no idea what that meant … actually my guess was some kind of bonus they were getting per sell. Not exactly true. The percentages represent what band of pricing the picture is currently selling at. Shots in the early cycle go for a lower price which jumps significantly when it gets to the 80’s 90’s and heartstopping sold out. As luck would have it, the image I really like is selling well and is now priced at 60K. Oh well, there’s always the lottery or more appropriately in Vegas – a lucky pull on the Mega bandit. Note they had Linda’s favorite picture of Peter’s on the wall as well.

And then we came to the last picture. The recently released Zebra shot. I do no remember how large this particular picture was, but it was easily 2 meters square. The neat thing about this is it is his first wildlife release and more intriguing to me.. his first shot taken with a Nikon (800 I think … Linda can verify). Not to often when a professional artist sees the light and switches sides – take that Canon lovers! From a collectors perspective, this shot has a lot going for it – two firsts in the same shot. We looked at it for awhile and commented it was interesting – maybe not the word to use in a gallery. The salesman started scurrying around and mentioned something about “going to do something for us”. We didn’t think much about it and started backtracking on a couple of pictures which included another look at Linda’s favorite shot. A few minutes later we look over and that huge zebra shot was making its way down the aisle with a pair of legs sticking out from under it. Ummm, looks like things are going to get more interesting. After quite the struggle, he gets it inside a viewing room and proceeds to change all the lighting around to show the different effects it has based on the level of light – again, another stunning feature of whatever process he created to print these babies. Linda and I bantered back and forth about how we were looking for something to hang on our fireplace but eventually came to the conclusion that the whites and blacks would blend too much with our river rock… that and the part I didn’t say – I just don’t think the shot is that great but I could just be a jaded wildlife photographer. The next 30 minutes is somewhat of a blur but our banter turned into some serious discussion which led to the idea that more color would do the trick and the next thing I know we are looking at Linda’s favorite picture in another viewing room. Lights down, lights up, stand close, stand back, sit stand and all we can say to each other is WOW. I’ll make a long story short(er), but you probably saw this coming a lot earlier.

hit the jump to read about the rest of the experience

Continue reading Something Interesting Happened on the Way to the Venetian