A Visit to Carolina Tiger Rescue

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I had the opportunity to visit the Carolina Tiger Rescue on Monday. This organization rescues wildcats (tigers, lions, and such) and provides these animals a home that is safe, respectful, and humane for as long as they live. They take in wildcats from all over the world and try to educate the public about the issues of wildcats in captivity. This is an excellent organization that cares for and feeds these rescued animals without any state or federal funding assistance. In other words, they rely on people like you and me to help them out. If you think this is a worthwhile cause, you may consider giving them a tax-deductible donation (they are a 501(c)3 nonprofit).

The animals at CTR are beautiful, majestic creatures and are very well cared for by a small staff and many volunteers. They conduct periodic public tours (you must per-register and buy your ticket) to educate people about the animals they keep. The tour I went on was approximately 2 hours worth of interesting information and a chance to see these animals much closer than you could at any zoo (sorry, you still can't pet them). If I remember correctly, the tickets are not very expensive and a good portion of those sales goes directly to the Carolina Tiger Rescue. There are some excellent photo opportunities to be had and I have included a few of the pictures I was able to get. (EDIT: From the feedback I received from Amanda at CTR, there is a $1.50 processing fee for purchasing the tickets. The price of a ticket (in-season) listed on their website is $15.50, which includes this fee.)

As a side note, I am still learning photography, so this was a fantastic learning experience for me in that way too. I was trying my best to get pictures without too much fence, but the closer they are to the fence, the harder it seems to do that. And, yes, they do come close (I was about 3-4 feet from most of these animals and their habitats, but behind the people barriers). I also got to try out some panning shots. Unfortunately those didn't work out well for me this time. Oh well. I'll have to try again soon.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Merry Christmas

Well, it's almost time for Christmas! I hope that everyone has a safe and enjoyable holiday season, whatever you may celebrate. For me, this is a time to slow down and enjoy time with my family. It's not about the gifts, its about enjoying spending time with family and being thankful that I am able to do so. A lot has changed for me in the last year. I was able to get a new job, my wife is no longer working and my daughter is growing like crazy! (she'll be three the day AFTER Christmas!). Anyway, here are a few more Christmas pictures to share. Enjoy and have a safe holiday.

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Happy Horses

I took this picture a while back and came across it again today. It made me laugh. So, I thought I'd share it with you. These are two of my daughter's bouncy horses, called Rody's. She LOVES them and hops all over the house! They were positioned like this by my daughter (she's 3... well almost. Not unitl 12/26!). She has a great sense of humor.

Anyway, these little guys are cute and thought I'd share some fun!

Abstract and Architectural Photography

A couple of my favorite subjects to photograph are architecture and cityscapes. For me, these  are also difficult subjects to photograph and actually make look good. Many of us have been there: you're out and about and come across a spectacular building or an object that just screams at you to take a picture. So, you take that picture and then, when you return home and upload it to your computer it isn't at all what you had in your mind. Many times that is me. As an amateur photographer, I still struggle to get that vision in my head into the frame on my camera. Thankfully, some of the things I envision, I can fix in post. Others, well, let's just say I need to revisit those locations and try again.

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I had the occasion to visit a local museum and captured a few shots. I was hoping to have time to take more, but it wasn't to be. Anyway, I've included two of the shots I took. One is a shot of a large marble wall, the other is a shot (or an attempt) of the interior from the second floor.

For the marble wall, the picture was taken from the second floor using my standard 18-55mm lens. The shot was looking down towards the floor.

The atrium shot was also from the second floor looking towards the observation station in the museum.

I welcome any feedback on ways you feel these shots could be improved. For the marble wall, I was attempting to make it seem somewhat industrial and abstract. For the second, I wanted to show the sweeping curved ceiling. I changed it to black and white so that the focus was not on the brightly colored walls.

Atrium

Christmas is a good time to practice Bokeh

Well, I didn't get to post anything last week. Sorry about that. It's budget season at work and, well, I've been a bit preoccupied with getting that done. Anyway, on to the real stuff here!

I read a post recently on the Digital Photography School blog that inspired me to try some of my own pictures using the Bokeh technique. Generally, Bokeh is achieved using a large aperture and get your main subject in focus. Christmas lights add interest to this technique, especially when used as the backdrop to your subject. Christmas light Bokeh can render some very beautiful shots where your foreground is out of focus, your main subject is in focus (usually) and your background is out of focus with the lights blurring into balls of light. I found this technique to be generally easy to achieve, but somewhat difficult to achieve the true look that I wanted overall. Using the largest aperture available and focusing on the subject a few feet in front of the desired background lighting was the easy part. Framing up my subject in an interesting way was more difficult for me. After many shots and different props, here are some of the shots I came out with. As always, comments are welcome.

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What to Expect

I just wanted to write a quick note as to what to expect from my blog. I intend to blog on a regular basis (weekly) about different photography topics that I find interesting. As you have already seen, some of the topics include things I've learned and hopefully regular critiques of my own work. I do comment on others work, but I keep that to the Google+ Photography Critique Circle (Colby Brown's). You can find information on that in my Google+ profile here. On occasion, I may just happen to do a product review.

I enjoy learning about photography and taking photos. I frequently read other photo blogs, follow many photographers on Twitter and Google+. I look to these places for additional inspiration and hope that others will begin to follow me here and comment to help me improve the blog, as well as my photography.

Thanks again for reading!