Photography . . . Travel . . .

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Saturday Morning With Danai and Connor (Malayan Tigers at the San Diego Zoo)

Last Saturday I spent about 3 hours at the Malayan Tiger enclosure at the San Diego Zoo, and got almost no photos. Granted, I did spend almost an hour of that on the phone for work, but still, even though I could see Connor almost the entire time, he stayed way up at the top of the hill. Most Zoo visitors that walked by couldn't even tell where he was. Whenever I spotted someone who looked particularly disappointed I would show them how to see him - or at least, what you could see of him.

Today was much better.  When I first got there Danai was napping right out in front. 



Over the course of the next hour and a half or so she would occasionally get up and move to another spot.





She was pretty lethargic most of the morning, but if you looked closely you could see that she wasn't always asleep.



At one point a keeper came by and tossed one of those giant femur bones over to her.  Once she realized what was going on she jumped up pretty quickly and headed down to shore of the pond to get it.




That thing is quite the mid-morning snack.



She hauled that bone back up to the rock ledge by the tree in the middle of the enclosure and spent the next half hour or so munching on it. I think it's safe to say that this is the "don't even think about taking my bone" look.



I took a walk over to the Amur Leopards for a little break. The last few times I've been there this one has been way to close to the front of the cage for me to get a shot that makes the cage disappear. I got lucky today.





There are a lot more pictures of the Amur Leopards in some of my earlier blog posts, which you can find in the Archive listing at the bottom of this page.

I walked back towards the exit the same way I came in - right past the tigers. At about 1:30pm Danai went in for the evening, and Connor came out. The keeper had put out a few handfuls of meat for him, but he want straight for the femur bone that Danai had left behind. He worked on that for quite a while, at one point you could hear a pretty loud snap as he crunched through it.



Connor had his second birthday at the beginning of April.





As I was leaving Connor decided to go wading in the upper pond, and I managed to get a few close-up shots of him.   





Click here to see more pictures of Malayan Tigers Danai and Connor, and also the Amur Leopards whose names I can't seem to remember.
    

Sunday, April 14, 2013

San Diego Botanic Garden

We spent a few hours on Saturday morning wandering around the San Diego Botanic Garden (formerly known as the Quail Botanical Garden) with our local photography club.  The sky was overcast, which helps a lot when trying to get pictures of flowers.

My first stop was the frog pond, but unlike last April, there were no frogs to be found on Saturday morning. We did find some nice lotus flowers though. 


Here are a few more images of other flowers we found around the garden. 






Well, this next one isn't exactly a flower, but a leaf I found in the rainforest area. I wanted to get an example of thin depth of field with the 35mm lens on my Fuji X-E1.


The San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas, CA is a great place to spend a few hours walking around - and there are lots of benches placed along the paths for those times when you just want to sit for a bit and enjoy the scenery.


After lunch we stopped off at Elizabethan Desserts, a little bakery not too far from the Garden, for cupcakes.  They were good.



Click here to see a few more images from our Saturday morning walk around the San Diego Botanic Garden.
     

Sunday, April 7, 2013

San Diego Zoo - Mostly Tiga, The New Tiger

I spent most of the morning with Tiga, the new Malayan Tiger at the San Diego Zoo.  She spent most of the morning at the very top of the enclosure, where it was almost impossible for people to see her.  If you didn't know where to look you would almost certainly miss her.  Every now and then she did come down the hill for a few minutes.








I did take a short break at one point and walked over to see what the Red Panda was doing.  Not much, it turns out - which works just fine for me.



A little green lizard ran up one of the trees at the Tiger enclosure.



Click here to see a few more images from this morning, Saturday, April 6, at the San Diego Zoo.
     

Little Italy San Diego - An Evening Walk

Heather and I were joined by a friend for a few hours of walking around San Diego's Little Italy neighborhood on Wednesday night.  Along the way we talked, took pictures, and stopped by the Burger Lounge for dinner.  Here are a few images, all taken with the Fuji X100.

One of our first stops was the Mona Lisa Italian Deli, where we picked up some oil-cured olives, cheese and Italian candy.




After dropping our purchases back in the car we started wandering around looking for things to photograph.  


Our friend LaRee had her new Fuji X100S to try out.


There are all sorts of things to photograph in Little Italy.




Click here to see a few more images from our Wednesday evening walk around Little Italy San Diego.
     

About Me

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San Diego, California, United States
About me . . . When I'm not working I like to be out exploring and photographing. I do this blog just for fun, and to be able to share these images with friends. I hope you enjoy viewing these images as much as I enjoyed creating them.

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All of the content and images on this site (c) Frank B. Baiamonte. If you would like to use any of these images please contact me via email at frank@frankbaiamonte.com to discuss terms of usage. Note that images from the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park are not available for commercial usage. You can also see more on my Instagram page @frankbaiamonte.

Header image: Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, Cibola, Arizona. End image: Downtown San Diego, California skyline from Coronado Island. Profile picture: Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho, by Heather Baiamonte.