Skulls

Let's just admit it, there is something incredible and fascinating about bones and skulls. One of the best special exhibits done by the California Academy of Sciences, in my opinion, was 2014's Skulls exhibit. In a super simplified summary, it was a large room filled with skulls and information about said skulls. It allowed insight on how the internal bone structure of animals directly relates to their functioning and needs as living beings. As you can imagine, I wanted nothing more than to photograph the exhibit, which is precisely what I did. There are a lot of photographs coming up and I'm not going to ruin it by being overly wordy, I am just going to let you look and enjoy. 
Note: To add a bit of drama, and also bring things down to more basic elements, which is what bone structure is, I've desaturated the photos so they are black and white. The images are scaled down and paired (in no particular order) to save a bit virtual space. Wishing they were larger? Well, maybe, just maybe, these will become a zine at some point in the future, most likely with more words. 

Creatures

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have this as yet amorphous project that I'm calling 'Behind Glass' involving photographing items in museums, conservatories, etc. to delve into the human obsession with collecting and looking at things of all sorts. As I've begun working, I realized it's not just taxidermied, dried, or otherwise no-longer living things that are collected, there are also zoos and aquariums that collect fauna and put them on display. 

On my latest trip to the California Academy of Sciences I was able to get some rather interesting images and views of the normal and unusual species they had on display. 

(This is another photo heavy post so I have once again shrunk the image size so I could incorporate a larger quantity of pictures)

That yellow and brown spotted thing on the right is actually a very big eel that has an awesome symbiotic relationship with the shrimp crawling on it. 

I just love sea dragons (and sea horses).

Look closely, there's a tadpole in there!

I know spiders make some people squeamish but I tend to find them fascinating and beautiful (and yes, I'm 'one of those people that catches and releases spiders found inside my home). This orb spider was utterly gorgeous.

In my mind this dart frog was totally posing for me, sexy calendar style.

The textures and patterns in this set up fascinate me as much as the snake itself.

This catfish was bigger than me. 

There was no way I could get this anaconda all in one frame.