A trip to the zoo.
An Easter weekend trip to Kent to meet up with old university friends included the always slightly disconcerting experience of being one of three Andrews in close proximity, and also culminated in a trip to Howletts to stare at exotic animals who have no doubt become quite befuddled by their sudden relocation to the ‘garden of England’.
It gave me the first real chance to try out my new fancy-shmancy camera (a Nikon D40X for the geeks among you). It was, to be fair, not the best of days for photography. Not only was the light terrible – he says, pretending he knows what he’s talking about – but biting gale-force winds turned my fingers into immovable stubs and threatened at one point to fling me into the elephant enclosure. Many of the animals quite sensibly chose to stay indoors, probably pining for their native savannahs of Africa. I imagine the prospect of living a constant struggle for life seemed at that point somewhat preferable to having your fur forcibly rearranged by the weather.
Despite all that though, I did end up taking a great many photos. I’ve been pretty self-critical in picking out the very few that I consider to be any good; there’s a lot I still need to learn about choosing the right aperture and focus to make the most of a photo. You can jump to my Flickr gallery by clicking either here or on the image at the top of this post.