Close Up

Titan again, but this time I tried to capture some of his personality, and the emotions surrounding his previous life and rescue, by focusing just on the eye region. This turned out as one of two photos that I think really capture the essence of the sanctuary, you can almost sense some of the abuse and sadness in his past, but you also recognize that those problems really are in the past for him. Like he's finally found some peace.

Titan

This is Titan again. There will be a lot of him popping up around here soon. Not much more to say than I already did on the other one of him posted already.

Not all the cats were big

This is one of many servals in residence at the sanctuary. They're very popular as pets because of their smaller size (round about 3 feet long) and the fact that serval kittens (like most kittens) are pretty damn cute. Like all the other wildcats, the cuteness fades. While the adult cats are still beautiful, they turn out to be much more than the owner bargained for: they can be very aggressive towards humans and other pets, and they are difficult to control (able to jump about 9 feet in the air). So, needless to say, they end up in places like the Wildcat Sanctuary which is a much better home (still not as good as the wild).

Mix It Up

In the interest of not putting all the tiger photos together, here's something a little bit different. This is Diablo Guapo (Handsome Devil), the sanctuary's black jaguar. This is probably the photo that recieved the most time as far as editing is concerned, it took a while to remove fencing and other unnecessary noise from the background, and some more to get the effect just right. I like the two dimensional effect of this one, it hardly seems like a photograph at all.

Sorry it has been so long

Its been a hectic and photo free few months since my last post. I can't even remember everything that has happened to keep me from regular entries here but here's a taste: broken computer, frequent travel, lack of material, internship...that's a few that make me feel less bad about my lack of production. But I now have more free time than I know what to do with (the internship ended a bit sooner than I thought it might) and I have some stuff worth posting so keep an eye out. Here's the first of several photos I worked up for The Wildcat Sanctuary. This is Titan, my favorite cat by a long shot and one of the many things I regret having to give up. I think we can all agree that he's pretty damn photogenic. He and another tiger, Lily, ended up coming to the sanctuary after their owner was killed by another tiger. He has put on some 200 pounds since he arrived and I believe he is now hovering around 500 (despite losing all four canine teeth), I think he certainly earns the big cat title. My absolute favorite times at the sanctuary were walking near his enclosure and being greeted with chuffing (a deep, throaty rumble that tigers use as a greeting). It was also fun watching him stalk the other interns when they weren't paying attention near his fence. He's one of the many reasons I want to keep doing what I can to help the sanctuary out even after I am gone.