The Wilds, Part 1

So my weekend at the Wilds, photographing exotic wild animals, flowers and skies, was quite amazing. I haven't had much experience taking pictures of animals other than the pets, so I felt a little out of my element, but the fact that we got to be out in open air buses and so close to the animals made it pretty easy to get good shots. I took over 1200 (yes, that's twelve hundred) pictures throughout the weekend, so it will take a good while to get caught up through blog posts. At this point, I'm just kind of throwing out some highlights, with the hopes of adding details about species in future posts.

We got up at the crack of dawn on both Saturday and Sunday, quite literally. Unfortunately the sunrises were mostly a washout (we had periods of crappy weather during the weekend), but here are a few shots of the break of dawn.

There were approximately 40 of us in the photo camp group, and we were always split between 2 buses to ensure that we weren't packed on top of each other like sardines. Here's a photo of the other bus.

This is one of my absolute favorite photos of the whole trip, a close up of a bison.

Here's a wild horse (Przewalski's wild horse).

This is the Sichuan Takin. An odd-looking animal, if I say so myself. Reminds me of something out of Star Wars.

This is another favorite, a wild donkey: the Persian onager.

After breakfast, I was able to get some flower photos. Here is some Indian's Blanket.

Sorry, I don't have an ID on this flower.

This is a male Indo-chinese sika deer.

And here is a beautiful female cheetah.

Wow, all this, and it's not even noon on Saturday yet!