Wingham Wildlife Park

Ruth and I went to visit the Wingham Wildlife Park last week. I always have mixed feelings about seeing the animals in wildlife parks, on the one hand I really enjoy seeing them but on the hand I wish they were not in captivity. There were also a lot of birds like the ducks with their ducklings that were just free to come and go.

Here in the Wingham Wildlife Park the enclosures were all pretty good. They are investing in upgrading all the facilities for people and animals since they took over the site.

Website here

I liked the fact that their two lions were rescued from a French circus and that they are involved in other conservation projects.

There is a little bit of everthing in the park including animals like lions, tigers and meerkats, owls and birds of prey a tropical house, otter enclosure, penguins pool and peacocks wandering the site along with exotic chickens.

I found quite a few feathers on the paths walking around, lovely huge goose feathers I think, an owl feather and some from the tropical birds and others I can't identify.

The peacocks seemed to enjoy showing off their beautiful feathers when not chasing the chickens from potential food.

You could buy food for the meerkats, which we did and you can look over their enclosure and drop the food in. I liked that you could get quite close to some of the animals with warnings of course about putting fingers near them.

They have various experience days including one where you can help feed the tigers or be in with the lemurs and photography sessions too.

For Woman's Day and signs of Spring.

I have been thinking about a series of images and texts for Woman's Day and experimenting with spray painting and printing some paper.

The series is called True Romance, this is the first piece that looks at the issue of equal pay for woman. I was surprised to find that equal pay was first enshrined in the 1950s and to see the discrepancy that there still is especially in part time work.
It amounts to another huge tax on woman's earnings.

Out and about over the last few days it seems that tentative signs of Spring are finally emerging. It has been a long and cold winter this year and the daffodils are still not out fully here in London. In St James park the crocus were just out and daffodils just starting to flower. There were quite a few people out in the park and seagulls , ducks and geese on the water.

Islington Chapel market and Epping Forest

With two of my themes and interests in mind I was in Islington for one of them, taking photos of street scenes and the market there. It's interesting seeing the effects on me of a lot of recent publicity about photographers being stopped from taking photographs outside in everyday life. I don't find it easy sometimes taking photos in the street, but I do believe that we should be able to do so as artists as well as tourists etc.
It is the increasing money to be made from the ownership of copyright that is causing the problems I think.

Later in the week a friend of mine took me with her to Epping Forest again. It was a lovely day to be in the trees and to see the young ducks and geese on the pond. Taking pictures of trees can be really surprising, when looking at their trunks and branches at first they appear ordinary, yet sometimes in the photograph a spirit type face is looking back at us.