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What Have We Been Up To?
So far this year we went on two short outings. First to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in April and then to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido in May.
The Academy of Sciences is a a great destination. We go primarily for the rainforest exhibit, a three story dome with a path that starts on the rainforest floor and spirals up to the canopy. The main draw are the thousands of butterflies housed within, and they also have a few birds living among the vegetation. The lowest level of the rainforest exhibit is below the dome, where you can walk through a clear acrylic tunnel beneath a simulation of the Amazon river. Beyond the rainforest exhibit is the rest of the Steinhart Aquarium with displays ranging from the huge 100,000 gallon California Coast aquarium to small aquariums with just a few specimens. The Academy also houses a natural history museum, planetarium, reptile and amphibian displays, and much more.
I have mixed feelings about zoos. On one hand the idea of confining giraffes, gorillas, and other animals to an enclosure seems wrong. On the other hand they don’t have to contend with parasites or predators, get better medical care than I can afford for myself, and while in the wild they’re being hunted for food and body parts the San Diego Zoo Safari Park has active breeding programs. I also feel that humans have much more of a connection with things that they can actually see and not just read about, and that a kid who sees a rhinoceros is much more likely to care what happens to them than the kid who only sees them on YouTube videos.
You can see my uploads for May in my recent blog post that includes my new photos from the Academy and the Zoo, and some old photos that I dug out of my archives. I have also added featured collection of twelve butterfly photos.
My Social Media
My latest photos usually go up on my Facebook page first. I don’t particularly enjoy spending as much time writing descriptions as I do editing photos, so I’ll throw them up there before I’ve given them titles or written the descriptions for my online store. I’ll also occasionally put up photos that might not be good enough to print but still look good on screen.
I’ve also set up a Flickr page where I post photos as I publish them to my store.