How Winter Turns Us All Into Ansel Adams

Plus, deadline looms for the Buffalo Zoo Photo Contest

I love when Buffalo turns black-and-white, or close to it.

Snow piled up to here!

Tundra!

Is this Greenland? No, it’s Buffalo.

At this time of year we all turn into Ansel Adams. Great photos, effortless. Even with a blue sky!

I liked the skier in the picture above, the red against the muted winter colors. N.C. Wyeth, the great illustrator, would have agreed with me.

His son, Andrew Wyeth, preferred nothing in the picture. Here is my Andrew Wyeth tribute.

Isn’t winter great? You point the phone in any direction. You push the button. Et voila.

You are a great photographer!

Speaking of which ….

Zoo Photo Contest Deadline Looms

The Buffalo Zoo Photo Contest wraps up on Jan. 31. That is Franz Schubert’s birthday! When I am not seeing the world through the lens of the Wyeths I see it through the lens of classical music.

I have to enter the zoo photo contest, you know? I mean, all I do is take pictures there.

Note to self: Next year, take pictures of Zoomagination. That is its own category. You take pictures of the lantern exhibits. Nobody takes pictures of Zoomagination so the competition is much less keen.

On the other hand, the competition in the People’s Choice category — any zoo animal snapped in 2024 — is keenly competitive.

Take a look at the entries so far. They are great!

I am sure I have some good photos. I have to go through Google Photos and check. However a lot of the photos the Zoo is showing, they are amazing. The photos of the lions. This one photo of Tiberius, called “Day Dreaming,” is stellar. And there is a great photo of a sloth. I do not even know where the sloth is in the Zoo. I have never seen him!

Scanning the entries, I see no photos of the capybara, pictured in the photo I just posted from my, ahem, personal collection.

Lions seem to be popular. I do have this lion photo, from May 21, 2024.

Most of my pictures, I took them kind of casually. A lot of the time I am sketching the animal and I want the photo for reference. However I do like to try to snap them when they are looking especially dramatic or cute.

What’s this? A hyena. Good boy!

Well, this is something I will have to take on in the next couple of days. Pawing through hundreds of pictures.