Kristina Jacob Photography

I have always loved animals, and love visiting the Wildlife Learning Center. Imagine my excitement when I found out that they were offering an interactive adult zoology class for five weeks!

Last week was my first class, and of course I took some photos to share with you all. We started learning about the different animal classifications, starting with insects such as the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach:

This Indian Stick insect:

And this scorpion (I did not touch this little guy):

We moved onto learning about amphibians by looking at this African Bullfrog:

And then moved onto learning about reptiles like this baby American Alligator:

We then learned that birds are closely related to the reptile family, and saw this blind screech owl that was rescued:

The softest little animal that was brought out for us to learn about was the Sugar Glider, a marsupial (there were actually four rolled up in a blanket, I was able to catch this one as he got out — yes it had to be held so that it wouldn’t glide away):

And out night ended with a showing of this grey fox:

I look forward to the next month of classes. Thank you to the Wildlife learning Center for offering this type of outreach to adults, and for doing great work!

And thank you, as always, for stopping by!

It has been a long time since I have posted–I have had some personal health obstacles within the past 10 months, and am finally getting back to blogging!

I have some exciting news to share with my wonderful readers, I have recently gained interest in having my images hanging in a few different locations. Currently, I have six images hanging at a spa in Santa Clarita, CA– what is more calming than some beautiful macro nature images?

Here are the six images that were chosen to hang:

Night Blooming Cerus

Backlit Leaf

Orchid Waterfall

Backlit Orchid

Cana Lily with Water Drops

Aloe Leaves

Of course you can contact me about ordering any of these images for the walls of your home of to give to someone you love!

Thank you as always for stopping by!

Gates stand at the entrance to a home that is no longer there after Hurricane Katrina.
Bay St. Louis, MS

Hurricane season is always a question mark for me. Yes, I live in Southern California and am no stranger to natural disasters, but have roots in the South. Namely, New Orleans.

Most of my family lives in and around the New Orleans area, and so I keep the TV on the Weather Channel when a hurricane comes knockin’, like Hurricane Isaac has the past couple of days.

I have only been around one hurricane while visiting New Orleans, in which the area was in the outer bands of a hurricane, cancelling all flights that day due to wind. Yours truly was scheduled to leave that day.

I am more familiar with the aftermath of hurricanes. I visited New Orleans in July 2006 for a family wedding, not long after Hurricane Katrina. What amazed me was the areas that were (and still are) devastated.

The area that had a huge impact on me was a visit to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Before I had any type of DLSR with nice zoom lenses, I had point and shoot cameras to communicate my vision. These photos are from that trip in 2006 to survey the damage.

The sensory that has stuck with me all of these years later is related to this image.

Drapes still whip in the wind of this destroyed home after Hurricane Katrina.
Bay St. Louis, MS

I can still hear the sound of the fabric whipping in the wind. I can smell the sea air. And I remember how absolutely desolate it felt to be standing in front of this property.

I am happy to report that my friends and family in the area are safe, although at the time of this post, many are without power.

To my Southern readers, be safe!

Thanks for stopping by!

Aloe Plant
Taken at Descanso Gardens

A couple of months ago I had a small surgery, and haven’t exactly been mobile since. I knew that I had to have this particular ailment fixed, and that it would take a bit to heal, and it would be a while before I would be able to get out and take photos.

One of the things on my list of many preparations in the weeks before, was to take a morning trip with my camera to Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge. I am so glad I did, because months later, as I scroll through my library of photos (very few from June, none from July) I get to see a digital garden. The above image was taken on that day with my Tamron 90mm macro lens at ISO 400, f/4, 1/1000.

I converted this image from color to black and white because I really like the composition and the lines, and wanted to focus on those things about the image.

Thanks for stopping by!

Currently, I am checking out Zenfolio for my gallery needs. I have dappled in this site to host some galleries for my Fine Art,  Fine Art-Flora and Travel photography such as the image above. I’m interested in your thoughts on going to an outside site to see more of my work.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments section!

Thanks for stopping by!

Oh yes, it has been forever since I posted here. I have had a slight hiccup with kristinajacob.com. So, I am returning to the blogosphere (do the kids even say that anymore?) on this blogging vehicle.

While 2012 has been interesting and monumental, something really cool and unexpected happened last week while I was in San Francisco for a work conference. David Hobby of Strobist, the wildly popular lighting blog happened to be in San Francisco just down the street from where I was staying. He Tweeted to his followers to see if anyone would be interested in meeting up the evening that I got in town, so I had to stop by and say hi (it was just eight blocks away). There was a small, fun group of us, all very diverse but brought together by this really nice guy. It was fun to make new photographer friends and talk to David in a smaller setting…totally different from when I, along with 500 other fans, met him at The Flash Bus tour here in Los Angeles last year. David is very smart and very nice, as well as a very talented photographer.

Our conversation inspired me to do more blogging, since I have been lacking in that area for a few months. Thank you David for unintentionally making me think about my blog!

And, of course, since I got this photo with Joe at TFB:

I had to get a photo with Mr. Hobby, since I didn’t get a chance to last year:

Thank you Dave for wanting to spend time with some of your readers/fans!

And thank you to my readers for stopping by!

I was honored to speak to the Lancaster Photography Association last week as their guest speaker for the evening. They are a great group of people and I had a lot of fun showing them some of my images. if you’re in the northern LA County area, this is definitely a wonderful and active group of photographers.

I had a lot of fun putting my talk together and running across some of my favorite images:

Swan in City Park, New Orleans

Giraffe at the Santa Barbara Zoo, Santa Barbara, CA

Tree at Earthquake Fault, Mammoth, CA

I loved sharing these images with everyone and being able to talk about my favorite thing: photography!
At the end of the night, I was awarded with a really nice certificate of appreciation, and given an honorary membership to the LPA! I look forward to participating in this group and shooting some pictures with these fun photographers.

Photo by Don Jacob

Thank you to the LPA for a fun night of photography and for being such gracious hosts!

And thank you for stopping by!

Check out http://kristinajacob.com/ for my updated blog!

The Lilly family is quite near and dear to me, as they are my beloved’s family. One year ago, little bro Shane and his girlfriend Kaleigh brought my nephew Connor into this world. He is a happy baby who is always laughing, and it is amazing to see how much he has grown this year.

Of course, it was not exactly all smiles for little Connor on the morning of our photos. The poor little guy had some major teeth breaking through, but we were able to coax a few smiles from him using our combined efforts. And Auntie Kristina with a toy on her head while worrying about Speedlites and diffusers.

Here are a few of my favorites:

[slideshow]

This shoot was so much fun because I got to hang out with my little nephew and try some things I learned and bought at Photoshop World. I am excited to try out more photo techniques on Connor as he grows up. I’m sure he is even more excited to hear “Look at Auntie” about five million more times.

Thank you to Shane and Kaleigh for letting me document Connor’s precious first year!

Thank you for stopping by!