This is the week my rebel arrives...I pretty much have the tracking number memorized and I keep going to the Canada Post website, but there haven't been any updates since an hour ago!
Maybe that's why I'm being a sarcastic smart-ass? I dunno...
(This guy's nuts...these were wild bears..) [/quote]
Reminds me of a tv news piece a year or so ago about a self-taught bear expert who once called Alaska's brown bears harmless. He and his girfriend were mauled and I believe eaten.
As long as we are spending so much time discussing what a natural environment is we should also define what a domestic animal is.
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Invertebrates:
Honey Bee
Fruit Fly
Ladybug
Leech
Earthworm
Pardon me, but what are invertebrates doing here? I thought the challenge description was "mamals, birds, reptiles and amphibians."
(Is kermit a domestic amphibian? Are boa's a household pet? And what about canaries?)
Then again, there are subsets of the categories you've listed that are still wild. For example, I've seen wild dogs. They used to be domestic, but were let into the wild and have turned nasty. Additionally, as another example, I've got over 100 wild pigs on my ranch.
thatclodthere: I totally understand your excitement. You have every right to enjoy and be as weird as you can possibly ever be.
Best of luck with your Rebel. Party on!
thatclodthere: I totally understand your excitement. You have every right to enjoy and be as weird as you can possibly ever be.
Best of luck with your Rebel. Party on!
Equus pontificus -- definitely undomesticated; virtually unapproachable unless first sedated by oral administration of large quantities of beer or other noxious spirits.
Equus pontificus -- definitely undomesticated; virtually unapproachable unless first sedated by oral administration of large quantities of beer or other noxious spirits.
hehe! I thought Americans stopped saying 'oral' and 'administration' in the same sentence a while ago!
I realize a lot of people keep retiles as pets but those animals are still not considered domesticated. Your typical Bearded Dragon has not either been trained or adapted to live in a human environment or to be of use to humans. They may be docile but still "wild."
Equus pontificus -- definitely undomesticated; virtually unapproachable unless first sedated by oral administration of large quantities of beer or other noxious spirits.
hehe! I thought Americans stopped saying 'oral' and 'administration' in the same sentence a while ago!
Be glad I didn't use the Latin abbreviation: p.o.
Are people who like to opine constantly driven by an overwhelming need for oral pontification?
BTW: I agree with the technical difference between animals which are pacified and/or captive and those which are domesticated.
No reptiles that I can think of have been domesticated.
[/quote]
How about all color morphs that have been created/manipulated in reptiles today. If they couldn't occur/survive in the wild, wouldn't that make them by default "domesticated"?
I agree with skiprow and thatcloudthere wholeheartedly, however the debate is largely a moot point. If you shoot in a zoo (or even museum) with a natural or blurred background, then nobody will know during voting whether the scene is natural or not. Unfortunately, that might mean a disadvantage to those who make the extra effort to shoot a relatively mundane squirrel or bird in the wild.
I think the scalvert and magnetic999 captured the whole debate here, but I'm not sure I agree with their conclusion. I don't think this is about backgrounds and whether you blur them or not.
If you spend enough time outside, you'll find that the big cat that has to catch and kill its meals rather than be fed has a different look in its eye.
Here's two images:
Both are "big cats", and doctornick's photo is a better photo than mine, so this may not make my point. But, the look in the eye's of the predators is different.
This might work a bit better. I look at this little guy, and I see a creature that really understands the fight/flight realities of the world (he was ready to fight so I chose flight.)
But Scrum8 probably has a better example in his portfolio (Sorry Bruce, I should have checked before I referenced your work.)
This is a small and "unexciting" animal. But something about him screams "wild."
So, I'm not sure if I am getting my point across, but I think it is going to be harder to capture the feeling of wildlife at the zoo, than if you get lucky on a wild squirrel because zoo animals simply are not truly wild anymore.
In short, I think it will be clear which animals are wild and which are not.
Just my opinion.
FWIW though, it is an opinion that was solidified last week when the first two commenters on my dart picture reminded me that fooling the voters is a little harder than we think.
And then there are those creatures whose natural habitat is just where they want it to be. This guy was trying to get from Point A to Point B, and his path led through the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. Fortunately not too many of the numerous visitors noticed him. I did, and after getting his portrait, prayed he'd keep going, nice 'n calm...
I think the best argument for allowing zoo shots is because it IS so hard to tell the difference. If zoo shots are forbidden, then any photo with a man-made object visible might be construed as an unnatural environment and punished for it. These photos of wild animals were taken in my backyard, but the context might cause voters to assume it was a zoo...
I think the best argument for allowing zoo shots is because it IS so hard to tell the difference. If zoo shots are forbidden, then any photo with a man-made object visible might be construed as an unnatural environment and punished for it. These photos of wild animals were taken in my backyard, but the context might cause voters to assume it was a zoo...
Nicely done.
But, unless I am guessing incorrectly, these are not photos of your pet deer and Thanksgiving dinner to be. These are photos of wildlife that wandered into your yard?
If not, you win, because these look wild to me. But, manmade objects aside, these look wild, and I think that is the point of the challenge.
If they are wild animals that wandered into your yard, you are a lucky guy, and these are the type of photos that should win. And that is why I think this challenge is so hard. There is a huge luck factor involved in getting a shot in the first place. Nailing your exposure is the second problem.
Yes, they are wild animals that wandered into my yard (amazingly, the last two shots were taken within an hour of each other). Note that I live only 45 miles from Manhattan. While it IS possible that I could get lucky again, my point was that the background objects in the first two images look like they might be part of an enclosure. If zoo shots were taboo, then these could get marked down by someone making an incorrect assumption. For that reason, I think zoo photos are OK and we should just move on and take some pictures already. ;-)
