Flora & Fauna

This picture was taken at Alligator Adventure, in Myrtle Beach, SC. In the park there, they have several varieties of birds in very large cages. This blue and gold macaw I managed to catch at just the right time, to capture the feeling of being stuck inside a cage. The sun was in the right position to put the shadow of cage bars over this poor guy, and only several weeks after I'd taken the photo, did I realize how sad a picture this really is. If this cute guy is still down there in Alligator Adventure, I hope they're giving him all the love a macaw could ask for!

More kittens! Here we have my brother and his fiancée's other kitten, the bobtailed orange wonder, Kingsley! He's a cute little snuggle factory, fuzzy and fluffy and somewhat tuckered out after spending an afternoon in my product photography tent playing with an off-camera ball of red yarn. Just look into those cute little eyes and, like us, you will want to adopt him and be surprised at how expensive adopting and owning a cat actually is. Still, he and Phil were both worth it, and make my trips over to visit my brother's house a real joy. I just love playing with these little guys!

Living in Pennsylvania, it's only natural that I live close to a lush deciduous forest; the kind that changes colors during the fall. One morning I decided to get up, grab my camera, and take a little hike back into the woods, to see what I could find; the result is here before you, a warm palette set against the cool sunlight of a mid-autumn day. It's just a shame the colors don't last very long! You're lucky to get maybe two weeks of prime time, before the leaves fall from their branches, and the forests are left bare and brown.

One sunny afternoon in March of 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, I decided to social distance myself downtown for some lonely photographs of our fair city in its locked-down state...and came across these beautiful cherry blossoms dotting the Riverwalk, by the stadiums. I'd never seen them in full bloom before, since the city is a decently far drive for me and it's really difficult to pin down exactly when these beauties flower. It was a pleasant, fresh surprise to see and a welcome reminder that even in the hardest of times, there are beautiful things to give us all reason to smile.

This photo was taken inside the Reptile and Snake House at Alligator Adventure, in Myrtle Beach, SC. The snake had just been sprayed lightly with water so as to keep the scales moist, and you can see the water bead up on there. If you look closely, you can see individual grooves on the scales, even. I am still, to this day, stunned I managed to get any kind of good photograph considering the lighting conditions in that place; a dark room, with pitch black walls, lit only by the soft glow of heat lamps and fluorescent lighting. Ask any photographer; that makes for one TOUGH time getting a good shot of anything!

North of the Currituck Lighthouse is a vast stretch of beach, off limits to anything that isn't four wheel drive. It's a more wild, untamed stretch of beach home to the unincorporated community of Currituck, a place unlike any I've actually seen, where the streets themselves are off-road beach territory and the sparse houses are scattered throughout the dunes. It's in this community that a herd of roughly 100 wild Mustangs can be found, their ancestors left behind when visiting Spanish conquistadors returned home. It is actually against the law for any person to be within fifty feet of these beautiful horses, leading to strange situations where wild horses can be found in people's garages, or rolling about in the middle of the sandy streets, or like here where the horses stop and take in the majesty of the Atlantic Ocean. This sight right here genuinely made my day!

A cliche thing to call a photograph, isn't it? Tranquility. And yet, that's about the only feeling I get when I look at this photograph, and remember how relieved and relaxed I felt after the great deal of walking I had just done in an effort to find such a beautiful place. We traveled up and down the spit of land that Presque Isle inescapably is, on foot, following a path through the woods that meandered by the sight you find here. I was struck by how still the waters were, how blue the sky is, and how the sunlight behind me cast a brilliant glow on the autumn foliage across the marshes; it all came together in a perfect moment, captured by my camera.

Pittsburgh's Phipps Conservatory, a beautiful multi-winged greenhouse founded in 1893 by steel magnate Henry Phipps, is one of the jewels of the city; a gorgeous tour-de-force of plant life from all around the world, housed inside its old, weathered, temperature-controlled glass walls. Every year, the conservatory goes through many different changes, each cultivated to represent a different part of the world. When I had taken the tour in the fall of 2015, the conservatory had been reworked to represent a Japanese zen garden during autumn; a beautiful sight represented here by these delicate paper umbrellas, hung overhead down a long, glass hallway. Outside, a dreary mist filled the October skies...but that just added to the allure and mystique of the sight, unusual as it was.

One of my favorite features of the Carolinas, South Carolina in particular, are these trees. I'm not actually sure what kind they are, but my best guess is a "shortleaf pine", and these things are found all over the place. There's something very photographically fascinating about these trees to me, since whenever I come upon a forest full of these down there, I see a strangely symmetrical forest of vertical "rods", with almost no branches or even underbrush. I've struggled to think of some sort of interesting way to portray these trees for years now, to say nothing of how to actually get up close to one of these 'stick forests' without getting bitten by a snake or chased by an alligator or something wild like that. (They aren't exactly pedestrian-friendly, after all!) So, while wandering around a plantation down there, I noticed a thicket of these trees by the road, and attempted a 'bug's eye view'.

Just in time for Halloween, we have this! All alone, strung up between a set of branches along the Zig Zag trail, along the slopes of Mt. Hood, was this spider's web. Taken literally steps away from my other photo, "Wooden Warmth", this spider web, while vacant, was still beautifully constructed. I may be squeamish of spiders, but I cannot help but respect them for what they do, and how meticulously they do it. How long did it take for the spider to create this web? Furthermore, I wonder what the spider was off doing while I was taking photos of its silken home. Probably off doing spider-stuff. Ah well! Hats off to you, Mr. Spider; you built yourself a fine web!

Who loves kittens? Everybody loves kittens! This is my brother's sweet little kitty Phil, contemplating the universe after playing with his big ball of yarn. Not too long ago my brother and his fiancée had gone to the local animal shelter down in Wilkinsburg, and I'd come along with them. They had a room off to the side where the little kittens could be isolated from the rest of the shelter's feline population, where the fluffy things could relax in relative peace and quiet. Upon seeing this kitten, along with his orange-colored brother, our hearts melted. They were just too adorable, and they couldn't be separated! So....we walked out of the shelter that day with two adorable balls of fluff. Here's one of them, for your viewing pleasure!