I love ring-tailed lemurs (and all lemurs). This particular picture was taken at the San Francisco Zoo, and the lemur exhibit is probably one of the nicer animal enclosures that can be found at the zoo (there are several types of lemurs in the enclosure).
If I am fortunate enough to go to Madagascar one day, I will be going because of the lemurs.
One of the best investments I made as far as camera gear goes has been the Olympus Sytlus 790sw. While the camera only has a depth of about three meters deep, it is more than sufficient to get decent pics of a variety of tropical fish in the waters of Thailand and islands like Koh Phi Phi.
Note: I am way to chicken to dare try to seal my DSLR properly to take even better underwater pics 
. Since I am rather clumsy, and probably more lax than I should be when checking things like seals and gaskets, I decided I would rather risk losing a camera worth about $250 USD than losing the amount of money I have invested in my DSLR.
One of my favorite exhibits at the Singapore Zoo is a walk-in aviary that they have. While aviary would seem to mean “birds”, the aviary at Singapore Zoo has a host of birds and other animals, so you will find many smaller mammals inside of the exhibit as well ( a baby lemur kept attacking my shorts).
I caught this three-toed sloth doing what they do best…sleeping!
While this probably isn’t my best photo from snorkeling at Koh Phi Phi, it was one of those times when I was able to just “hang around” while a bunch of tropical fish were swimming by.
I have to be quite honest in stating that taking pictures of fish is far more challenging than I thought. If the fish aren’t moving away from you rapidly, the tides will often change very quickly before you can even get off a shot. The only way I had any luck taking pictures of the fish was by brute force, which meant that I literally snapped over a thousand pictures to get to the 400 or so snorkeling pictures I have on my Flickr account.
A couple of alternatives to snorkeling in Koh Phi Phi would include Koh Surin and Koh Similan. These islands are only open from November to April, about two hours away by boat from Phuket, and you will most certainly have smaller crowds present than you will find at Koh Phi Phi (you can even choose to camp there…but you have to book camps/bungalows well in advance).
I’m not sure why I like this picture so much. There’s nothing special about the picture per se, so I guess it is just a matter of personal taste. The figures caught my eye at Phuket Fantasea because they seemed whimsical, if just a tad out of place for a Thai cultural show.
The Simon Cabaret in Phuket, Thailand is a “must see” show if you are visiting Phuket (I probably wouldn’t recommend the show for those traveling with small children).
Most of the performers in the show are Kathoey, or also affectionately known as “ladyboys“. You will often see many of the performers in the show at “Soi Kathoey” later in the night if you’re strolling down Soi Bangla in Patong (and many of the drunk tourists actually mistake them for being originally born as a woman).
Krabi is actually one of my favorite places to visit on a regular basis in Thailand. It was quite windy on this day, with a thunderstorm both just approaching and clearing, so it was one of those times when you had a great mix of clouds and interesting colors coming in from the sunset.
The only post processing I did with this photograph was with Picnik, which included:
1. A slight crop because of some vignetting in the corners.
2. A slight bump in saturation.
3. A slight bump in temperature.
The original is here. As you can see by comparing the two images, nothing too dramatic was done to increase the color vibrancy.
One of the things I’ve got to do better is remembering to use a monopod or tripod. While it may be pure laziness on my part, I generally forget to bring one of these with me to help make low-light images even better.
This meerkat looks pretty mean in this picture. I caught this meerkat when it was yawning & the image came across like it was some kind of psycho about to kill me.
This is probably one of the few times I will publish a higher resolution picture on the web, largely because it makes seeing the sea snake easier. While I personally wasn’t afraid of the snake, because I know they would have to bite you somewhere fairly “soft” to inflict lethal damage, the guide started to freak when this snake got a little “too close for comfort”. I basically took this snap with my Olympus underwater cam, then was whisked away a few seconds later.
Update: I found out this is known as a Banded Sea Krait.
