Animal Ark!

Today we got up early, and I do mean early! Paul and I decided that flying was the way to go. He only lives 10 minutes from the San Jose airport. Well, it sounded like a great idea... The flight was a strange one. We had to get to the airport, then catch a bus to the San Francisco Airport and fly from there. A ticket directly from San Francisco was a LOT more expensive. Go figure.

Getting there... Turns out a shuttle from Paul's house was not at all reasonable - quite expensive, so we hired a cab. OK, that worked quite well and was nice and we get to the airport at like 4:30 and it was PACKED! Yes, crowded! When Paul got the tickets he was told we had to check in so we stood in line for half an hour only to be told that no, we just have to give the bus driver the bus ticket and actually check in with our luggage in SFO. Argh! This all means that we could have foregone all this at San Jose and just gone right up to SFO, of course parking would have been an issue so I guess this was OK, but we could have slept in an extra hour at least. Oh well. Fortunately, at SFO it was very quiet and we were able to check our bags in a few minutes and security was also a breeze.

The flight. Wow, did we ever luck out there. It was a plane half empty. I was able to get a good window seat, north facing so I was not looking into the sun and outside some fog, it was a beautiful flight. I got a really interesting photo as the plane taxied on the runway to take off of an interesting looking building at SFO and then got some nice shots of San Francisco. The plane then flew right over the mothball fleet (old WWII ships) only a few left. I even got some nice photos of Donner Lake (yes the same lake that I usually photograph when we drive by. This is the first time I ever got an areal shot). Lots of nice Sierra mountain photos as well. In all I shot over 100 arial photos with my digital camera.

Sue, who has volunteered at Animal Ark for years and is the person I usually stay with, picked us up at the airport. We dropped our luggage off at her house and then went right up to Animal Ark.

Aaron and Diana who started Animal Ark were not there this time. They were on a much needed vacation. However a list of animals they needed was left for me and I went right to work. I started with their cougar, Tonka. He was quite cooperative. Unfortunately the lighting was a bit harsh, but when he laid down in the shade, I simply set the white balance on the camera to shade and shot away. The pictures came out quite nice and being digital I can easily change the bright white background if I feel the need. Oh, and I have no idea why he was licking that rock...

I also needed to get photos of Khan, their white tiger. I got nice photos last year, but you can't have too many tiger photos ;-) Unfortunately, Khan had other ideas. He just wanted to be up against the fence to say HI. Their tigers are hand raised and actually quite friendly. Well, through the fence at least ;-)

So, since the tiger was not being cooperative, I decided to got to the next animal in the list, a Kestrel named Krystal. Now kestrels are small birds. So, I decided to use my 300mm f2.8 Tamron lens which is like a 450mm lens with my D1x. The results were pretty good. Krystal is tame and is brought out on a glove. She posed quite nicely and we even got her to flap her wings for some really nice photos.

I needed to take new photos of the Arctic wolves Loki & Rayna. I had taken quite a lot last year, but they were just pups then and look much more mature now. Loki is shy so photographing him was easy, but Rayna, she is anything but shy. She would not leave the fence and only backed away when Sue tossed in some scented snow for them to roll in. Between the harsh sunshine and the lack of cooperation, I decided like with the tiger to come back later.

I also had their new bear on my list. On the way I noticed Cordelia their great horned owl was out and I snapped some good shots of her on the way. The new bear is a young female who's had become separated from her mother and would have starved had she not been brought to the Ark. She had been nourished back to health, released, but when checked again, was found almost starving so it seems that she is destined for a life in captivity.

They also have some very friendly foxes up there and although they were not on the list, Paul and I wanted to visit and photograph them anyway so we got some nice photos of Denali and Klondike the two Arctic foxes and the Kit foxes Kipling and Kesha.

Time flew by too quickly and the sun was beginning to set. I also needed some Taja the tiger photos. Sunny days may not be conductive for good photography, but late afternoon light and snow are absolutely fantastic. Taja has never been cooperative about photographs and today was no exception. Like Khan earlier, she just kept hanging along the fence meowing at us in typical tiger fashion. So, we decided on a simple tactic. We would separate and so she would have to go from place to place to greet and meow at people. That worked fantastically. I was able to get more good photos of her than I could have ever imagined and in perfect light. Wow, in the remaining light of the day, I was able to take lots and lots of really good photos of her. I ended the day with a photo of the sun setting over the mountains to the west.

	Animal Ark Day 2