Lincoln Park Zoo, Pt. 1

The other week I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo. A zoo is one of those places I'm always excited to go to, but once I'm there, I kind of get depressed.

Anyway. Used a long lens which I never use (70-300), and was pretty much just doing kinda boring test shots. Bad: it needs lots of light and focuses slowly, I wouldn't use it to freeze fast action on a cloudy day. Good: relatively inexpensive, lightweight, small, good image quality, and has killer reach.


Ok, nothing remarkable here. But it's an Oryx guys. Oryx. It has an "x" in its name. Really, I just wanted to show you the (rubber?) tips on the horns. Looks like insect antennas.


Thought these were hyenas at first, but later realized they are actually African Wild Dogs. There were a group of five or so. Sometimes I couldn't tell where one dog started and the other ended. You see what I'm talking about in this photo.


He blends in well.


Him too. Harbor seal I think. Taking a nap in the sun for sure.

Will post more later.

Conditions Are Favorable

Yet another dreary, overcast, and rainy Friday.

Perfect for a walk.


Ever notice how puddles seem to attract cigarette butts? Throw that shit away.

Earth and Music

Happy belated Earth Day. Recycle, take public transportation, ride your bicycle to the grocery store, turn off your lights, plant a tree.


Celebrating Earth Day, Green Apple Festival at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Crowded, but decent music, including Umphrey's, Mad Professor, and Disco Biscuits. Did I say you should recycle?

Speaking of music, my guitar. Cliché, I know, but I have to do it. It's one of those things everybody does at some point. Kind of like puberty. I'm sorry, that was a horrible analogy.


It was my very first guitar. I learned everything on it. It has endured one or two thousand hours of playing, it has been walked into walls, dropped on concrete, played in the rain, has a couple thousand miles logged in it, kicked by drunk roommates, pushed over by Quentin, and countless other stupid and careless things by me...


Nothing but a humble mid-range Fender, bought on sale. I've purchased and sold two other guitars that were technically "better" than it, but I'll never let this one go.

I also bought a djembe recently. Primal, portable percussion:


It's the real deal, handmade in Kangaba out of a single piece of dugura wood (bonus: the makers plant at least one tree for each djembe they make) and goat skin. Kya seems somewhat smitten with my djembe. Everytime I pick it up to play it, she comes trotting over to give a sniff. I thought it was my immaculate drumming, but then it dawned on me that the goat skin probably smells like the rawhide bones she enjoys gnawing on so much. It's pretty funny.


I wanted it as light and portable as possible so I got a smaller one, only about a foot across. But it still sounds great.


Awesome. Gotta go hit up the drum circles soon. Also, you should recycle.

I See Stratus Clouds

Rainy last weekend. Nice during the week. Rainy this weekend. Lame.


Long lens test across a brownish river.


Cop lights. Some randoms got into a fight late one night. I think I heard something about a dislocated knee. Good times.

Macro Lilies

The other day, I saw some birds drinking from a puddle on the street that had been contaminated with engine coolant and transmission fluid. I spent a moment deciding if I should take a picture or...

Next thing I know, I'm waving my arms, chasing these birds away, and shouting at them, trying to present a threat so that they won't come back. I look up, and see that a small crowd of people has gathered and are watching me, probably trying to figure out why this Asian dude is flipping out. Needless to say, I didn't take the depressing picture and opted to find a way to clean the shit up, for similar reasons I didn't photograph the beaver eating twigs from a stagnant puddle in a filthy garbage ditch a couple months ago. Still, I probably should have taken both pictures.

So, now that I've talked about birds that will inevitably die due to drinking poison, let's talk about something totally unrelated: macro photography and flowers. Happy flowers.

Some say macro photography is not much more than some sort of scientific photographic documentation, some complain about lack of depth of field, and others think it's just plain boring. Well, it's all kind of true. But I still like it. Here are some random handheld flower macros:


To me, this looks like so many different things that I won't even get into it. It's a yellow lily from the shower setup post. Pistil in focus, and pollen covered stamens in the background.


Another perspective.


A pink lily, lacking a pistil. It appears (and mostly is) moderately out of focus on purpose, with a small section of the mid-stamen actually in focus. It gives it somewhat of a color-flaring, underwater feeling. Sometimes it looks like a flower, other times it looks like some sort of sea anemone.

Bloomingdale Murals

(update 2009.02.05 - For some reason, lots of the murals have been painted over with a whitewash or something. Oh well.)

I drive down or take the L past Western pretty much everyday, and I see bits of some crazy murals on this little underpass down an alley. Finally decided to investigate a couple weeks ago, turns out the "alley" is a street called Bloomingdale, and there is about a mile of murals all along the wall.

Just a casual point & shoot walk. Most of the murals were on the north side of the wall, and therefore (in this hemisphere) are always in the shade. The diffused light made capturing the tones easy but also flattened the overall appearance of the murals.


This is the one I see when I drive by. Crazy shit, right? I mean, one half of that guy is in an Aloha shirt growing a palm tree on his head, and his other half is a robot shooting a laser out of his eye at a heart he is gripping with his robot hand. It's weirder than rocket propelled Mayflower-esque boat next to it or the lady with smoke for hair walking a duck that wears heels.


This one stood out because it was airbrushed. It extended further down, transitioning into a related scene. I'm not showing that part because I thought that part looked like crap. Really, it looked like some two year old scribbled what looked like a homeless man breakdancing next to a broken boombox. Ok that actually sounds like it would be awesome but trust me it wasn't.


Further down were more underpasses with all sorts of interesting stuff.


And strange stuff.


And a zebra waving a flag, and it also looks like he is chewing hay, or perhaps vomiting on his friend.

Field Museum of Natural History

Almost forgot about this. The same day that I went to the Shedd, I also popped into the Field. Honestly, I prefer the Shedd even though it is smaller and more crowded. I guess I just prefer looking at living things instead of dead things.

Photography at both places was somewhat difficult due to the low light level, the crowds, panes of glass in between me and the subject, the museum's rule against flashes (though not many people obeyed that one), and sometimes my lack of interest. Kept it casual and didn't spend much time on it, but even then it required a bit of patience, a steady hand, and a tolerant girlfriend.


Standard snap of the Stanley Great Hall. Probably a billion people have taken this exact picture. I really wasn't all that impressed, but oh well. Everyone around here knows about Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton on display in front. However, not many people are too familiar with that poor old elephant a little further down, including me. I walked right by it.


The Asian exhibits were some of the first things we looked at. Here is a Buddhist bell. It was hard to resist hitting this thing.


And here is a large Chinese drum, it was almost four feet across, bad ass. It was made out of metal and had really interesting grooves and markings on it too. It was even harder to resist hitting this thing. (The depth of field of my lens appears to be almost non-existent here).


We made our way to the Jade Hall, which is where this figurine resided. This exhibit was small but interesting. Interesting to me because I like jade quite a bit.  Because it keeps the ghosts away. It's science.


This photo doesn't do it justice but there was a large intricately carved jade disc, measuring about two feet across.  Really nice.


Then we looked at a house that had carvings and etchings of wooden monsters on its inside and outside walls.


Fossilized bird. When I was in Hawaii, I asked my friend Chuck if he knew what an Archaeopteryx was. He said it was a form of back handspring.  Good times.


Here's Cathy in part of a large exhibit that walks you through a crash course of the history of the Earth's flora and fauna, detailing the numerous mass extinctions that have taken place.  Really interesting stuff.

Crapping in the Woods is a Survival Skill

Cathy is now the proud owner of a brand spankin new mountain bike. It's a badass matte black Trek, but tactfully and appropriately accented with a bright pink bottle cage. Hot stuff. A photo is likely forthcoming. I think after a few test laps down by the river walk, we'll go log in a couple miles on the Illinois Prairie Path...

Along the same line and more relevant to the post title, with the better weather finally kicking in, I've been thinking a lot about where to go hiking. I've got a short jaunt in Lassen booked at the end of the summer with my brother which should be great fun. In the meantime, I'm throwing around ideas for hitting the AT again, or maybe spending a week in the Porkies (which I've been meaning to go to for years now) up in Michigan. Either way, it is shaping up to be another solo outing and I can't wait.

Well, so far I'm leaning towards Michigan since I've done most of the AT... so here are some old pictures from my various times in the Michigan woods. They were all taken with my trusty p&s Pentax, which I think I dropped in a river on one of these trips.


Standard sunset. When hiking, it's ritualistic to watch the sunset. It's also ritualistic to take a picture of the sunset. But really, when is it not?


Fresh wild blueberries, picked right off the shrub. A nice little bonus while out on the trail, since I'm usually restricted to eating freeze-dried Chili Mac and chalky protein bars. We sorted our harvest by quality, with the best ones towards the top.


Mike, enjoying a view of Lake Superior. We had matching shoes on this hike. We went to a local store literally hours before the hike and bought the last two pairs of what seemed like acceptable hiking shoes. Same shoe, same size, different colors. As a general rule, it's a bad idea to wear brand new shoes on a hike, and this was no exception. They were terrible shoes, and promptly disintegrated after 50 miles of moderate hiking. I'm still not sure why I didn't just wear the ones I brought with me.


Grass. Is that another sunset going on in the background? Is it?


Yep, it is. Check out how the color changed once it hit the horizon. Watched it. Took a picture of it. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. I have more pictures of sunsets than I know what to do with, and although the pictures get boring, watching it never does.

Shower Setup

The condo, setup nicely for Bernice's bridal shower. If I had set it up, you'd probably see a pony keg and jalapeño Krunchers. I'd maybe throw in some Cheetos to make it classy.

The setup.


Cathy told me to tell you that she arranged all the flowers. But the Bear grass was my idea.


More flowers. More Bear grass.


More.


Cathy's smorgasbord, which included vanilla cupcakes, almond spritzers (both from the last post), Nova salmon, pretzel parfaits, cheese, crackers, mimosas, pineapple punch, chicken salad, shrimp cocktail, and more. I didn't get to sample much of it, but I did sneak out with some chicken salad and a mini-bottle of ginger ale. Win.


Did you know that netting on the table is called a tulle? I didn't.


Gift bags Cathy put together.


Contents of the bag. No, that's not a salt/pepper shaker. It's Cathy's homemade lavender bath salt mix.


Photogenic parfaits.