A Dream Come True

Well, it has been a long time coming but the time has now arrived for us to pack and head off to Madagascar tomorrow.

Since I first visited Jersey Zoo as a young girl I have wanted to go to Madagascar to see lemurs in the wild, this is a dream that has grown with phenomenal passion and even resulted in studying the behavioural responses of captive ring tailed lemurs to visitor numbers and noise levels in relation to their enclosure design for my MSc thesis. Finally last year we went ahead and booked this trip which will take us to four reserves around the island during what promised to be two of the most exciting weeks of my life. I cannot express how excited, lucky and privileged I feel to be able to be making this trip and I look forward to sharing the experience, stories and of course images and videos from the trip. If there is internet access I will try to post an update, but if not see you all in two weeks.

A brief update and images from work!

Well, the summer seems to be drawing to a close if the weather is anything to go by, definitely a good catch-up day today, with the schools have gone back so I am finally getting some time to get on top of all my work. Over the last month or so I have been busy re-vamping my website, although it has to be said not without some problems along the way, but I am almost done and will be live by tonight so do pop along and have a look at the changes. I have re-organised the galleries and changed around some images, not mention making plenty of space for Madagascar! But it hasn't all been computer work, at the beginning of August I photographed the Bath NTS tournament which was a lot of fun and good chance to work on my sports photography, if your interested please have a browse here: Bath NTS, I have also been carrying my small compact camera around with me at work and have found some pretty cool stuff so here goes, WARNING contains a spider and a really cure mouse! 

Found this little girl running around on the path to the cave entrance, nibbling away at crumbs dropped by customers. 

But it's not just cute mice, found a couple of really cool bugs as well:

A bloody nosed beetle, a little camera shy this one.

A cave spider with her egg sack

And last but by no means least, the monster bug of the wall! 

I'm now down to only working a few days a week at the caves, but this is giving me chance to get everything ready for the big adventure to Madagascar which is now less than 4 weeks away, very exciting and just can not wait to get out there, in the meantime I am now regularly writing gear reviews on a panel for Practical Photography Magazine, although there are occasionally gear reviews I can't quite help with, for example portrait photography! I also have a new toy which I am still getting used to but will really help with macro work but have to say I am absolutely loving it already! Not going to let on with what it is just yet, I'm afraid you will just have to wait! So until the next instalment, happy snapping.