Intermezzo

Monkey at the beach...

Kuantan, Malaysia, 26 September 2012

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Sci-Fi cat

Dozing off after gouging on the krupuk we fed her... she loved it...

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Caught one...

Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia, 1 May 2012

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Frigate birds II

On the Suriname river...

Suriname river, Suriname, 8 January 2012

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Dolphins

Sadly nothing more spectacular of these pink belly dolphins... they are very hard to capture, especially with a manual focussing camera... then again, the problem is that you don't know where they are going to surface, so even auto-focussing must be difficult...

Suriname river, Suriname, 8 January 2012

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Frigate birds I

On the Suriname river...

Suriname river, Suriname, 8 January 2012

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Nosey

Ant eater relaxing in a bucket in an animal shelter... when they're strong enough they're placed back into the wild...

Paramaribo, Suriname, 7 January 2012

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Smiley face

Sloth in an animal shelter... when they're strong enough they're placed back into the wild...

Paramaribo, Suriname, 7 January 2012

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Alien

If you ever wondered where the makers of 'Alien' got their inspiration for that creepy E.T. that sucks itself to your face, this surely must have been it...

I couldn't get closer for a better shot, nor test if the creature was actually still alive - perhaps turning it over would have done the trick - because it was laying on a fallen dry river bed that couldn't be walked on... I'd probably had lost my shoes if I had tried or even get stuck myself... it was powerful mud...

Malaysia, 17 November 2011

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Sure, I'll eat that

Feeding a monkey (don't worry, it was approved food)...

Malaysia, 18 November 2011

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Downside Up

Was playing around with older photos from Zoo Kuala Lumpur.

Was concentrating on this one:

Not great, bad lighting, black creatures lit from above hanging upside down at the wrong time of day with the sun full out. Makes it hard to see any details or their heads and the contrast is harsh. Fill flash might have worked, but I wasn't that advanced back then.

I do have flashes now for the Canon, but I hardly use them.

They're inconvenient, too much hassle, and with a bit of a lens they propel the camera to 2 kilos. Let alone the fact that flash photography is darn complicated. As if taking a good photo isn't difficult enough...

Truth though is that this photo was taken with a Canon EOS 40D, which has the built in flash, I simply didn't realise I should use it during the day...

Anyway, playing around with the photo I thought: what if I turn the picture over, like they were standing?

And I found the result to be quite interesting (note that the crop is a bit different, so this one has more bats):

They transform into these elegant fashion models, wrapped in designer clothing, with the one in the corner about to break into dance (and perhaps song)... little Grace Jones'... you can almost see him tip-toeing around the others on some Tchaikovsky...

They also seem more vulnerable, standing up, and less intimidating... these guys just eat fruit by the way, so they're quite harmless...

Amazing faces also these bats. They somehow reminded me a bit of pictures of Egyptian gods, and after some googling it turns out I was thinking of Anubis, ancient Egyptian god, protector of the deceased and their tombs. The guy with the jackal head...

Still the not so great lighting, that didn't change :-)

Anyway, thought I should share...

Click on any of the photos above for the full new album of Zoo Kuala Lumpur with 21 photos.

Elephants once more

And in the spirit of the monkeys I also reworked the elephants.

Some more detailled post processing, and the full version is bigger.

Click here - or on the photo above - for the 20 photos in this album.

Click here for the total index.

New albums

Have been restructuring a bit...

Albums now go through the photobrowser.

You'll see a little thumbnail list on the left side. You can scroll through the list with your mouse wheel if you keep your mouse above the thumbnails, or by clicking on the little arrows to the left of the list.

You can also navigate through the photos by clicking on a thumbnail, or by clicking on the buttons at the bottom of the list. Those will present the previous or the next photo. Note that loading of the photo might take a while, especially on the full version.

Tested all this new php stuff in IE8, FireFox 4 and Safari, and they all seem to function properly. Haven't tested it on Chrome or Opera.

A recently added album is of a trip to the East Coast and Sungai Lembing.

Click here - or on the photo above - to view the 23 photos.


Monkeys

I also reworked the monkey album.

New post processing and upscaling the size a bit. You've probably seen most of it already, but if you're interested in the bigger versions, click here - or on the photo above - for the 22 photos in this album.

Click here for the total index.

Not all albums go through the photobrowser yet...

Not a streetmonkey

East coast Malaysia, April 3rd 2011...

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Palm cat yawning

From a very recent trip to the east coast...

I called her 'palm cat' cause she was sleeping in a pot, under a palm. The shutter sound woke her up, clearly too early for her taste, cause she couldn't stop yawning... this is one of those yawns...

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The Mantis Revisited

Shown two already a while back, but there were a few more I never showed here, so here's all of them...

I did want to capture another quite surprising detail of these creatures, but I haven't seen one around lately.

The inside of the front legs have a colored patch, a very bright reflective blue, green and yellow, something you wouldn't expect on an insect that's completely brown. The mantis is probably mimicking a flower with it when she opens up those front legs, mesmerising some unsuspecting insect... 'oooh, pretty'... right before it's staked and eaten alive...

But as you can see on these photos, the legs are firmly shut. I saw the coloring only later, when I didn't have the camera close by...

Treehugger

I call him (or perhaps her?) Theodore... he's been hanging around the Frangipani's (quite literally) for hours and he has the quite cute ability to change colour... some kind of chameleon I suppose...

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Acrobatics in Autumn

Dutch spider doing Cirque du Soleil kinda stuff...
Note how it clings on to two legs with two other legs...

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Yes, those legs are mine...

Praying mantis, crawling from behind a bench... one more time...
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Well hello there gorgeous...

Praying mantis, crawling from behind a bench... To my surprise they're actually smaller than pictures like these had me believe... Their 180 degrees rotating head is quite amazing, and I could get it to look at me by softly blowing in its directing... Usually you see the green version, but I didn't have a choice, this one was brown... Had to use flash though, it was wobbling in a somewhat dark corner...

Look at the spikes on its front legs, I wouldn't want to be another insect caught in those big eyes, they are ferocious. And a well known fact: the female chews up the male during copulation... She doesn't even wait till the pleasure moment: usually she starts nibbling on his head half way, the poor sod... Talk about one night stands...

Click on the photo for the big version if you dare...