Tigers

During my first trip to Florida in 1980, I photographed tigers at Bush Gardens and was lucky to catch them up and around their enclosure. One even went for a swim, which my kids (and I) enjoyed at the time.

The first two images this morning were taken 27 years ago with Kodachrome 25 slide film. They were scanned 15 years ago and when I finally got access to them a couple of months ago, all I had to do was touch up the dust spots.

In 2003, I visited Bush Gardens again, but this time the tigers were sound asleep and didn't move at all. I took a few photos of them, but I like the ones I had taken several years earlier much better.

When I first started travelling as a young adult, I stopped visiting zoos because I hated seeing the animals pacing back and forth in small cages. Over the years, however, zoos have changed and animals have much more room to move around. In fact, you can hardly tell that the photos I am sharing today were taken in a "zoo".

When I go to Florida in a couple of weeks I am planning to visit the Naples Zoo to get photos of "rainforest" animals. If any of you have visited that zoo, please let me know what you think of it. I have visited their web site and it looks great, but a few reviews on line were not good. I'd like to know if I can photograph everything in one day, or would I need to go more than once.