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Formalities
First off, feel free to contact me at JustAProcess@Yahoo.com with any questions or comments. I'm very proud of all the pictures on my site here and I'm honored you would take the time to check them out. Thank you so much! Are all these animals in the wild? Are any of these animals in a zoo? With the exception of Lonesome George and the Northern White Rhino, none of these are from zoos as in animals in cages or small fenced enclosures. Every shot on my site is as wild as is possible. Unfortuantely, the romantic notion of animals existing far from human interaction no longer exists for many species. Some of these animals are hanging around lodges or camps where they are used to being fed by people. Others are habituated to humans by huge numbers of tourists like in the big safari parks of Africa. Some of the lemurs now only exist in areas that are so small and surrounded by farms that it's hard to see it as "wild" in some sense. But none are "models" (pets trained to pose) and none are in formal zoos or enclosures isolated from other species. My three rules to be considered wild and I would post on my website are: 1) The animal must have access to it's average range with free movement. 2) The animal must get at least 50% of it's food on it's own. 3) There must be interaction between predator and prey of some sort. What's the point of this site? Obviously, I love photographing wildlife and love just being outdoors around the world. But it is also my hope to document as much wildlife as possible then find various ways to share this collection and hopefully preserve it for anyone who ever wants to see such a wildlife photo collection in the future. Though a lot of people love looking at wildlife, few people have the time and money to actually do it. I hope this is entertaining or fun to anyone who checks my site out and I'm so grateful for your time! |
It must be expensive!
Oh hell yeah. It is incredibly expensive! The camera gear is not cheap for starters and I've lost cameras all over the planet for all kinds of crazy reasons. I've had an entire pack of really nice gear stolen in Spain en route to run with the bulls. I lost 2 cameras and a nice lens when sand from a desert in western India blew inside the moving parts and wrecked them. I've had gear fall in a lake, strange moss grew in all my gear after spending a few weeks in the Amazon and salt water has wreck many a lens of mine as well. Add the costs of flights, guides, park permits, hotels, transportation and other related costs and this collection of photos came at a total expense of several hundred thousand US dollars. What kind of camera do I use? Well, I've used dozens of different cameras for all this. I started doing this in 1993 with Minolta gear. I have lost a LOT of cameras over the years. Some got dropped, one was stolen in Spain, another was eaten by a Hyena in Namibia. True story. Cannon and Nikon both make awesome cameras, but I've had better luck with Nikon. Of late, I've been using a D850. |
Much thanks!
From the very bottom of my heart, I am so very grateful that my family and friends from all over the world take the time to check out these pictures. I wouldn't spend so much time, effort and money on this labor of love if it didn't mean an awful lot to me. I always feel very flattered that you would take time out of your busy day to check out my site! I also want to thank all my friends and family whom have actually went out with me on occasions to help me get some of these shots. I have a great brother who's been around for some of this. I also have countless good buddies like Mike Yanok, Don Tabb, David Mars, Robert Friedman, Josiah, my girl Hinling and even my grandfather and mother have taken trips small or large with me to various neat places to get some of the shots on here. I've also met some great people while out chasing after these shots like my good friends Dop, Annet, Peter & Elaine from Holland. Wayne Purcell from Australis who dragged himself through the snow with me chasing Giant Pandas. Martin Royale and Pete Underhay from England and many many others. Certainly they can all attest to how hard it's been to do some of this. Thanks guys! |
One last thing...
The last thing I want to say about this site is that even though most of these animals and places have been documented in other pictures and movies, The world is a dramatically changing place. The human population continues to expand and so long as that's true, our demands for resources expand as well. Given the massive amount of space we have taken from wildlife for our own use over the last few hundred years, I would not expect much to be left for wildlife over the next few hundred. For many of these animals and places, there will almost assuredly come a day when there is no place left for them and they are gone. Once that happens, much of this natural world will only live in movies and pictures taken during these generations. Perhaps many people won't care nor even notice in the future just as they don't now. But just as there are people who care a lot of about nature today, I believe there will be in the future as well. I'm going to try to have all my shots preserved even after I'm gone. Just in case anyone wants to see how the natural world was when we lived with it. |
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