Tag: animals

I've finally got my hands on the DVD with the documentary series "The Lion Ranger". The events of the series begin a year earlier and tell the story of Kevin Richardson and the inhabitants of "The Kingdom of the White Lion," home to golden and white lions, hyenas, and black leopards — although the last of these are left off-screen. The private reserve itself was created for the filming of the feature film "White Lion", which flops at the box office because of video piracy, and now its inhabitants will be sold off unless Kevin can find a way to make "The Kingdom" self-sustaining.

Also, in two weeks the film "White Lion" comes out on disc in the USA, and you'll finally be able to buy it anywhere in the world. You can preorder the DVD or Blu-ray version right now using these links.

A Caucasian Shepherd guarding the buildings of a former pig farm. Strays won't get through, but they can tease it.

The shots were taken on the second day of the year. Photos with snow, confirming that it's winter, are under the cut.

While I was going through the photos on the drive over the weekend, I found a Flickr photo from way back in 2007 that hadn't finished downloading; by the ID I found its page, but the link to the original was already gone, good thing the preview is stored in the same directory as the original, so by substituting its name I got the full-size photo. I made one more avatar from the photo; I doubt I'll replace my main one with it, which is also lifted from Flickr, but I've put it up in a couple of places for now, sometimes you want something new.

Today I got another newsletter from the Global White Lion Protection Trust, and from it I learned that a desk calendar with white lions is for sale, maybe I'll try to order it, too bad you have to get in touch personally by email to buy it, it'd be easier to buy through an online store. On the plus side, I found a PowerPoint presentation of the calendar (62.6 MB), I think you can pull a few good-quality photos out of it.

It's a shame though that there are so few photos freely available… Most are sold in printed form or used for design. And if you do manage to download something, it often ends up being a copyright violation. I don't know whether I'd buy photos of white lions in digital form, but for me that's easier and more convenient than ordering them in print, you can print a digital image yourself and then use it for userpics and the like.

It says the calendar contains photos by Karen Jane-Dudley, Jason Tumen and Leslie Anne Staller. Maybe by now you can find them somewhere and acquire digital copies, I haven't looked lately.

Went through the photos I took over the summer in the village, picked the best ones:

On Friday I visited Mykolaiv Zoo; I'd been planning to go there a couple of times since my last visit, but something always got in the way. This time I didn't really plan it. A free, sunny day came up — Friday is my coursework day, and the coursework assignments hadn't been handed out yet, and after the job interview no one had called back either.

On the way to Mykolaiv I checked the zoo's website and learned that on September 6th there would be a celebration of thirty years of operation at the new location. All in all, I got lucky — a weekday on the eve of the celebration, there were few visitors, and I could watch the animals in peace and take photos. The staff were getting ready for the event. I doubt I'd have had a good time amid the noise, racket and crowds of people, and besides, the weather on Saturday was overcast, which means even fewer successful shots.

I mostly photographed the big cats. The lions were mostly asleep, so I didn't get many photos of them, whereas the tigers were playing with rags, wandering in the water and even sometimes running and jumping, so most of the photos are of them. The jaguars, leopards and pumas are in cages behind fine grating and behind barriers — you can't really photograph them properly. I didn't spot the servals, they were hiding; even the leopards weren't visible right away, they were tucked into the darkest corners of their cages.

Because they were so active, I got the most interesting photos of the Amur tigers:

I got comparatively few photos of the less active lions, but there are interesting ones among them. For example, a lion tearing off and trying to eat leaves from a tree.

The rest of the big-cat photos from that day are in the gallery.

I photographed the zoo's other inhabitants too, including a bear that quite recently, against its own will, became a man-eater.