Perfectly poised Peacock with plumage proudly pointed posing

So here's what you do: find a beautiful background with lots of color and plop yourself down on the ground hoping that an equally beautiful and colorful bird parades along. If you dream enough, one will eventually come true. 

And then if you're really lucky, the perfectly pedigreed peacock will want to be your pet.

Plotting his escape while seething about how much he hates straw.

Give me anything to sleep on...soft grass, fragrant banana tree fronds, luxurious moss, a Hasten's Vividus mattress from Sweden...anything but this friggin' straw.

Finer feathered friends

A series of tests for a large scale project I'm working on.

When photographers go bump in the night

I really must learn to walk a bit more softly. I am (hopelessly) the quintessential bull in a china shop) and this charming fellow clearly did not appreciate it.

Nose to nose with Pattycake, a Western Lowland Gorilla

I highly recommend pretending it's summer so you can take summer hours and happily visit one of your favorite places. Mine is the Bronx Zoo where I was literally the only person in the vast zoo other than the zookeepers and other staff. Headed off to the Congo Exhibit for a family reunion of sorts where I camped out with my camera and watched the antics of the gorillas (my hairier relatives) who didn't seem to mind my company. In fact, based on some of the images I got, quite the contrary. Pattycake was playing with one of her teen boys when she noticed me and came over. And just looked at me. I almost didn't want to raise the camera to take a picture because of the connection I felt.

I have a large collection of neon letters. (Doesn't everybody)

Living in New York and getting to Las Vegas and other "electrified" cities on a fairly regular basis, it's not hard to amass quite the collection of glowing letterforms in all sorts of shapes, sizes and varying degrees of decay. (As far as I'm concerned, the more burnt out lights a letter contains, the better. And when it's rusty and dinged up...ooh baby!) Now I just need to figure out what to do with them all...perhaps a kiddy alphabet book for the post-apocalyptic toddler or a series of monogrammed note cards for their parents.

Another day, another guy's guy just waiting to kick the first ass of the first guy who looks at him the wrong way

So what the hell you lookin' at?

The most comfortable place on Earth (as far as 5 week old Caitlyn is concerned)