The Wilcox family’s San Diego Zoo membership may be expired, but unpublished photos remain—and there are still experiences for us to share together. For example: This lovely giraffe gazelle obscured by the foliage it eats.
What makes the Featured Image work for me, and may or may not for you, is the illusion of being in the wild—helped by the blurred leaf across the eye.
I initially treated the Featured Image as a throwaway. But on reconsideration, seeing the sharp detail of the rose petals and the shift in emphasis brought by using the dehaze control in DX Studio, I present this simple shot on a busy Saturday night.
This one comes from Nikon Zf and NIKKOR Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR lens. Vitals: f/6.3, ISO 100, 1/320 sec, 62mm; 5:48 p.m. PDT, May 9, 2026. Composed as captured.
The Featured Image isn’t the first Fortnight Lilies shared with you, and I suppose no new are necessary. But as I walked past these three, the potential composition grouping piqued my interest. So, I hauled out Galaxy S26 Ultra, switched to Portrait mode, and took the shot. Vitals: f/1.4, ISO 64, 1/5000 sec, 23mm (film equivalent); 12:35 p.m. PDT, yesterday.
Putting aside a few early-on complaints, this Samsung is the best smartphone that I have ever owned. The physical balance in the hand is exceptional, and it’s comfortable to hold. I carry my phones bareback; no case, so consider me a connoisseur about physical balance.
“If it lives, kill it” might as well be the axiom across San Diego city and the close-in communities, like the Village of University Heights or nearby Hillcrest and North Park. Insecticide is spread among so many properties that I am surprised there are any insects at all. Butterflies still flourish as do house flies, crickets, and some spiders. But they don’t thrive and their numbers are diminished.
Far more serious is the carnage among things that grow. Homeowners chop down trees, tear out grass, and replace lovely green spaces with cold concrete and wood structures, so-called Accessary Dwelling Units, or ADUs. The city wants them, and residents are rewarded for erecting ADUs. Other folks keep the lawn space but replace grass with wood chips or sand; trees of every kind, even those bearing fruit, are destroyed and replaced with succulents.
Our zoo membership expired yesterday; we chose not to renew. My wife and I hadn’t gone in months, with paid-parking changes one of the major factors keeping us away. Technically, members don’t pay to park, but confusion and congestion diminished the attendance experience.
I wonder how many members the zoo has lost because of the end to free parking for all. Matters are worse at Balboa Park, where many museums report attendance declines of 20 percent or more. Technically, both places are walkable destinations from our apartment: 3 km (1.9 miles) to the zoo, 3.3 km (2 miles) to the park. But the aforementioned confusion and congestion remain deterrents. Sigh.
Well, that’s what Google Image search claims are the pinkish flowers. Also known as the chandelier plant, or Kalanchoe delagoensis, the succulent is native to Madagascar.
I used Nikon Zf and NIKKOR Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR lens to capture the Featured Image, on April 4, 2026. Vitals: f/6.7, ISO 140, 1/250 sec, 105mm; 1:04 p.m. PDT. Location: Panorama Drive, in San Diego neighborhood University Heights.
I should have known. San Diego Zoo names its animals. But I wouldn’t expect identifying tags. As you can see from the Featured Image, this Penguin is Malloy. In a less-than-clear, unpublished photo, one of his companions is Mac. I wonder: Do they all these birds have “M” names, or is it a coincidence?
I used Nikon Zf and NIKKOR Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR lens for this one, which is close-cropped. Vitals: f/6.3, ISO 110, 1/500 sec, 200mm; 10:20 a.m. PDT. I chose the Zf for many reasons, and effective resolution is one of them: 24.5 megapixels, which is the sweet spot, in my humble opinion. File sizes aren’t overly large and burdensome, while the sharp 6048 x 4032 photos can be cropped to effectively enlarge the subject.
I spent some time helping out my daughter’s friend this afternoon. A bit of chaos descended last week. While he was at the hospital for treatment of an injury, San Diego parking enforcement towed the larger of two RVs, which was his domicile along with our daughter. Reason: The vehicle parked in the same location for more than 72 hours, which caused it to be classified as derelict. For sure, because he was injured.
They were in transition from a 37-footer to something little more than 20 feet long. As Voice of San Diego explains: “Cops Crack Down on RV Living“, and it’s the big ones they primarily target. A day or two later, and our daughter’s friend wouldn’t have lost so many personal belongings in the tow-job. (Shall we just call it theft?)
We return to my father’s big stash of slides; the Featured Image is from January 1973, according to the date stamp. He used a Kowa, likely the seT R2, to take photos of family, nature, and wildlife. I don’t know all his reasons for choosing the camera but one was the leaf shutter—in each lens rather the camera body. The design was characteristically unique then, and now. In the modern era, leaf shutters are more commonly found in fixed-lens models, like the several series from Fujifilm, Leica, and Sony.
Regarding the photographic subject, this might be the brook that cuts through part of the family farm, which my father gave away, not sold, to the co-pastors of his church about three weeks before his death in April 2024. They sold the property in May of last year, ending the Wilcox legacy started in 1895 by my great-grandfather.
My wife and I don’t go to San Diego Zoo as much as we should. Our current membership expires in April, and I can’t guarantee that we would renew. Perhaps more negligent, I have a trove of unpublished photos from numerous visits that really should be shared with you.
Let’s start with one, and surely no additional identification is necessary, eh? I used Nikon Zf and NIKKOR Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR lens to capture the Featured Image on Sept. 27, 2025. Vitals: f/6.3, ISO 400, 1/320 sec, 200mm; 3:51 p.m. PDT. Composed as shot.
Two years ago, my sister Nanette and I discussed traveling to Maine to visit our father, whose health appeared to be declining. We made the trip, and visited with him February 17-18. He died on April 16, 2024.
As I explained yesterday, the Old Man left to me a treasure-trove of photographic slides, most of which he presumably had shot. They’re all mixed up, which makes sorting through them kind of a memorial journey—no, an adventure! The current batch is so far from 1973 and ’74, and I have seen so few.
The lasting legacy left by my father is a significant number—hundreds at least—of photographic slides that remain from those he said had been damaged by water. I don’t know the specifics of the incident that destroyed perhaps half of them. That’s what he inherited to me, and I got more than did most family members.
The co-pastor couple of his church got the family farm to hold in trust intact. They did, for a whole 13 months, until May 2025, when a sale closed and they profited from it. Fortunately, the young farmer buying the property is son of the man who had leased the land for decades; I am sincerely glad for that.