A few more animal photos…

I still haven't updated the galleries on my website, but I did have occasion to work on a few more of my animal photos, so I decided to make one more post of the Disney Animal Kingdom animals — and then I promise to move on to something else! These photos are fun, and I really enjoyed "developing" them on my Mac. All of the photos were imported into Adobe Lightroom. After making minor adjustments in the Lightroom Develop mode, the photos were opened in Photoshop CS3 where I "polished" them and then saved them for the web. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Taking a rest…

It has been a while since my last post. I wanted to get the Animal Kingdom gallery up on my website, but it hasn't happened yet. Instead I have been really busy updating my presentation for the classes I teach at Life on Wheels. We leave for the Tucson conference in a little over a week, and I have so much to do. In the mean time, a few more animal photos. This Komodo Dragon looked to be enjoying some time in the sun. I sure do love my Nikor 70-300 mm VR lens!

Colobus Monkeys

These tree-dwelling colobus monkeys live in Disney's Animal Kingdom instead of the wilds of Kenya. In the wild these primates live in male-dominated troops and very rarely descend from the trees. Their black & white coats are truly amazing, and they made perfect models for my telephoto lens.


Over the weekend I plan to get add a full gallery of photos from the Animal Kingdom shoot to my website. In the meanwhile,here are three of my favorite colobus photos.

More photos from Disney's Animal Kingdom

These gibbons live on a small island refuge in the Animal Kingdom. According to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park website, gibbons live in small, monogamous family groups comprised of a mated pair and several offspring — the adult female is the alpha in the group

The blond gibbon is obviously the mother, who was having her own fun while keeping an eye on her offspring at the same time. Meanwhile, her dark-furred son wanted to have some fun of his own. By the fourth photo you can see Mom has reined in her son and was next observed her taking him inside the stone structure—probably for a nap.

Meerkats

Disney Animal Kingdom is more zoo/wildlife park than theme park. All through the park are animal habitats that, to my untrained eye, appear spacious and geared to the well begin of the animals. The Kilimanjaro Safari Ride is an open air ride in a large, jeep-like vehicle through a nature preserve where animals freely roam. As I "develop" my photos I will be posting some of my favorites to the blog. I also plan to add some of the best photos to my website photo gallery.

The little creatures pictured above are meerkats — really part of the mongoose family. Indigenous to parts of Africa, they live in groups of 20 to 50. According to one of the park naturalists, whenever one of the group is out of the burrow foraging for food, one or more meerkats stand guard and sound an alert if a predator approaches. Click on the photo to see a larger version.

We just returned to our RV after four delightful days at Disney World in Orlando. We both really enjoy Disney, so this year we purchased Florida Resident Seasonal Passes so we can go whenever we want. From our RV resort to Disney World is about an hour and forty-five minute drive, and since it is almost all on rural roads, it is really an enjoyable drive.

We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge and enjoyed every minute of our stay. We celebrated my birthday at Disney, and Eddie really made it special.

I brought my digital SLR to take pictures at the Animal Kingdom. I haven't gotten to processing those photos yet, but I do have a panorama photo to share.

The Wilderness lodge is one of four resorts on the lake that borders the Magic Kingdom, and every night an electric light boat parade makes its way around the lake, stopping to put on a show at each resort. One by one the boats light up and the sea creatures dance, until all of the boats are lit, showing the full scene with Poseidon bringing up the rear. It is really delightful to see!



To create the panorama I took a series of photos and stitched them together in Photoshop. Usually, Photoshop will create a seamless panorama (or photomerge), but it didn't work, so I had to create it myself — which wasn't difficult with a black background. Click on the image to see a larger version.