The Zoo Project
Zoo Friday
Animals are one of my greatest passions. I have always enjoyed watching them, even as a little girl. As a child we had a guinea pig. As an adult I got my first dog, a Pomeranian after September 11, 2001. This lead to a second Pomeranian 3 years later, then 2 more a few years after the second. The 5th one came along unexpectedly and so did the 6th. At this point my husband said no more! During the pandemic we lost 2 of our fur babies. We adopted 2 more and then a rescue needed us to take on a special little puppy. So we are at 7!
For my 50th birthday, instead of a party, I decided that I wanted to go to the zoo with a few friends and feel like a kid again. I hadn’t been to the Philadelphia Zoo, the oldest zoo in North America, since I was a child so that was how I spent my birthday. This zoo is a beautiful place to go for a walk, bring your camera and even sit and enjoy lunch with a friend. I found myself utterly captivated by the flamingos and the giraffes. After going through the images, I found a few favorites and painted them in Photoshop. I shared my fun images on facebook and a women reached out to me. They needed to raise money quickly for a giraffe barn for a young male giraffe that could not be housed with his father. She had seen an image I had posted on facebook. She asked if I would donate prints for an auction they had set up to raise money for the barn. I said sure! This lead to another barn that needed funding, then donations to the Lehigh Valley Zoo Gala, then a year later I joined the Lehigh Valley Zoo Gala committee. I spend my Fridays at various zoo’s as a way to create art as a photographer. I really miss that right now. When the zoo’s reopen I will be there. In these unprecedented times, consider a donation to your favorite zoo, a membership to a zoo or a day at the zoo. The photo to the left is me at the Allentown Game Preserve around 1971.
