Day 2: Heading Home

 First off, forgive the terrible quality of the pics. They were taken from the bus, through tinted smudged windows, at 70 mph (there isn't technically a speed limit in Belize)

On the way back from the docks, I grabbed a window seat in the tour bus and wanted to get some real estate shots. What you see in picture 1 is a typical house available to live in (and for sale) in Belize. They are on stilts because a lot of Belize floods during the rainy season.

Pic 2 shows some of the outlandish colours the houses are painted. This is commonplace to use whatever seems to be at hand, whether or not they go well together. 

Pic 3 here is an unfinished mansion. There were more than one that I saw during my stay in Belize. My guess is some rich couple started building it, and then lost their fortune in the stock market.

Speaking of Impossible

Static subject, whole new range of problems. For one, the glass was incredibly scratched up and dirty, for two, the subject was backlit.

I'd chuck this picture except he's too cute not to put up here.

Tubular

A Tube Anemone from a dedicated tank for them at the DC Zoo. Their colours are delicate and the flash somewhat washed it out, despite my best efforts. Ah well, better luck next time.

Reef Inhabitants

I must have shot this coral a dozen times, flash, no flash, Macro lens (used here), wide angle lens, you name it, I tried it. The lighting around the tank was very bad, and the tank was swirling with nutrients and small air bubbles.

In the end, though, I got one shot I'm happy with. I didn't get the killer shot like I did with the Atlantic Anemone, but I'm still pleased.

Glass

The DC Zoo has, in addition to the normal animals one might find there, an excellent reptile house. Unfortunately the critters are behind thick and sometimes smudged glass.

Which makes for difficult photography. Many of the shots from that house were marred by the glass getting in the way, but some turned out ok, like this large (female) Iguana.

Translation Error

There are some vistas in Colorado I had the devil's own time capturing properly, Black Mesa Monument being one of them. Colorado is mostly reads and greens, and then there is this one area full of black, very black, rocks. Volcanic history or something, didn't catch the tour explaining it all.

In any case, the steep dropoffs don't help either, I shot several hundred (and deleted just as quickly) pictures trying to convey the sense of it all.

Maybe this one does.

Tricky

There was a Tank Museum on my journey that I was looking forward to exploring. Sadly, no flash photography nor tripods were allowed (like flash could even remotely harm one of these beasts) making photography difficult at best. I talked the owner into letting me use a tripod, but so many barriers existed between me and each tank that I simply couldn't get close enough to make for interesting shots. This is as good as I could get.

Difficult

A Rhino, if it wasn't obvious. Rhinos are big, very big. You see them on nature shows but until you get right next to one in person, it is difficult to convey the size of these animals.

As such, it's even harder to get a good shot of one, especially with fences and whatnot in the way, so I had to settle for the eye and first horn.

Even so, the texture of the skin makes it an interesting shot.