2 posts tagged “national zoo”
because i tagged and geotagged my national zoo pictures on flickr, i was searched by some website to be included in their picture/map smashup. you can see the picture on their site, with credit to me by looking at their national zoo page. interesting tourist site; good idea, just needs a lot more fleshing out. and a more usable interface.
so i mentioned i took a trip to the national zoo, well i finally got the pictures up. i must have taken 200+ pictures but most of them were duplicates because i had auto focus on through most of it all and it had trouble distinguishing animals from backgrounds; or it would focus on the cage bars as they were much closer. so i basically threw out half of my pictures. but thats the great advantage of digital. i also went through and fixed levels here at home in development so it all looks nice and engaging. also, as always, shooting through aquarium glass causes massive problems. most of my pictures were taken in the aviary, where i spent a whole hour watching birds do absolutely nothing.
on the right: the eighth picture down is a giant fish from the amazon exhibit. the thing was seriously like 6 feet long, and it was in a tank with three or four friends. as you enter the exhibit which fills a small building, you round a corner in the darkness of aquarium and WHAM! theres a school of giant fish confronting you. right below that picture is a fish kissing the glass, its all blurry but i was scrambling to take that picture.
further down is an anteater, which is probably one of the coolest looking animals ever. somewhere below that, an orb weaver spider. there wasnt any glass between the audience and the spider exhibit, so i took that picture from about 1 foot away. i was really scared it would jump onto my camera and crawl onto my face and eat me.
down at the bottom: panda! panda! panda! he was inside eating. probably a better choice since it was 90+ degrees outside. after he finished eating a few stalks of bamboo he tossed his meal scraps aside and flopped over and napped. it would seem that pandas are pretty much real life snorlax.
so i spent like 4 hours at the zoo just walking around and taking pictures. i didnt have anyone to talk to so i just watched the animals sit around and be lazy. i didnt bother reading any of the information or appreciating any of the culture rooms because i firstly wanted to see all the animals, and then later wanted to get the hell out of the zoo. its a pretty big zoo, and though i had all day to wander around, it was hot as crap. i passed a 7-11 right before entering into the zoo, so the whole time i was in there i found myself dreaming of a slurpee. about 1/2 an hour into my journey i decided to get one when i left, not realizing it would take me so long to get through the zoo, so i neglected to buy their $3 bottles of water and trudged through everything i could in a meager pace because i also wanted to make sure i didnt miss anything. i mean, i doubt ill be going back anytime soon; its been about 8 years since i visited any zoo. so when i finally got out of there and picked up a slurpee i was dying of dehydration and heat exhaustion. i finished 40oz of frozen sugar within two blocks of the walk back to the metro. it actually made me feel kinda gross, but in an uncontrollably excited sort of way. i had mad tentative plans to take the metro to the smithsonian station to go see the national gallery, but i decided i was tired enough of walking around in the heat so i just headed back to chris' to shower and rest up for saturday's meet.
