365 days 1-14

1/365

I wanted to do some light painting with sparklers and had this grand vision of what my first photo of the new year would be. Unfortunately, as we all know, sometimes plans don't go the way you want them to and my sparklers ended up not working. LUCKILY we had some flashlights in our junk drawer that worked out! It took a lot of trial and error to get to this point, where I finally wrote the numbers the correct way and far enough apart that they weren't overlapping.



2/365

We had a roomie paint night where Laura worked on this cool shark painting! She later glued gemstones around the border, which really made it POP!



3/365

The classic "I have a crazy busy schedule and was at work all day and now I have no energy to take a photo" scenario emerged early this year, so I quickly snapped this photo of our baby redwood tree that Lauren brought back from California in the sunset.



4/365

I felt ASHAMED by my half-assed photo the day before, so I purposefully headed out in search of something to take a photo of. I had to work late and go to rehearsal for the Boarshead Festival, so as I was driving back home along Ocean Dr. I saw this sign. It stays up all year round and always makes me smile. I decided to take a photo of it, especially since it was greatly needed on this particular day.



5/365

Gracie was cocking her head and being SO CUTE, but as soon as I got out my camera she resumed her mean muggin'.



6/365

It was so cold that there was ice on these ferns during the walk into work! The cold front combined with wind chill made the average temperature 28 degrees: water bowls froze over, pipes wouldn't work, and apparently at Rehab a lot of things just straight up broke because they had never dealt with anything below freezing.



7/365

My third annual year performing in the Boarshead Festival! This year was different because I taught Shannon how to perform in my stead so she could take over the second two shows. It was the best of both worlds because I still got to go and experience the weirdness of it all but then I got to LEAVE.



8/365

I went for a walk along Sunset Lake just as the sun was setting. Right before arriving back at my car I saw this silhouetted heron. I unfortunately didn't have my tripod with me so there is a bit of noise in the photo, but one of my goals is to work on my night photography so this just gets me one step closer.



9/365

Kogi hanging out with me in Soundbooth.



10/365

I'm now officially one of Morti's trainers so in celebration we took her for a little vulture walk!



11/365

A couple of weeks ago we discovered one of our sharks was pregnant, and on this day she had her babies! It was like 101 Sharkmatians because they were all popping out at random intervals throughout the day and people would joyfully rush into the lab exclaiming, "IT'S UP TO EIGHT!" There was even a straight up "Lucky" moment because someone noticed a pup stuck in the endometrial sac and carefully unwrapped him, but then he wouldn't swim! So they had to motivate him to start swimming and he did! I want so much for them to name the babies after the 101 Dalmatian puppies COME ON PEOPLE GIVE ME THIS ONE THING.



We also finished a bit early in order to see the flamingos, who are still so cute.





12/365

We stayed late for an animal care meeting, where we toured our new wing and saw that they got this AMAZING RAINBOW LIGHT. And I also saw the Mystery Machine parked in the parking lot, so. Good day.



13/365

The monster in all her glory.



14/365

We had our Wildflight Christmas party and I stole these awesome raptor earrings during our Yankee swap. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!


Some of my goals for my photography this year include practicing night photography more (especially right now when I work all day and there is barely any daylight left when I get home for nice natural light), taking more macro photos with my lens attachments, purchasing a new lens finally that isn't stolen from my porch (yeah. Still bitter), and going outside my comfort zone. I've already taken more photos these last couple weeks than I had at the beginning of last year so I'm happy :)