Category Archives: Nature Photography

I’ve been a Nikon shooter since I picked up my first DSLR, the entry level D3300, in 2016. At the time, it came down to price: Canon and Nikon were about the same quality as far as still images went, and mine was the cheaper kit. But I liked the ease of the menu system and the results I got from the camera, so I kept on using Nikon cameras. I’ve since upgraded to the D750, and loved it for the past few years.

Fast forward to now and the Nikon mirrorless system. The company’s new Z30 is a compact, crop-sensor mirrorless camera body—basically a better version of my D3300 from back in the day. With its size and available accessories, it’s immediately apparent who Nikon wants to sell this camera to: aspiring content creators looking for a relatively cheap way into the YouTube/TikTok sphere.The last time I had anything like it was when I used a Sony point-and-shoot digital camera with around eight megapixels of resolution, so I was curious to see if the Z30 could win me over.

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I tested this camera in multiple scenarios, from street shooting to nature photography, and in a variety of lighting conditions. Most of the time, the camera was set to manual mode with auto-ISO, meaning I controlled the aperture and shutter speed and the camera decided which ISO setting to use—unless I wanted to achieve a certain look, then I controlled the ISO sensitivity myself.

I shot my still images on the highest quality setting, RAW files. I also shot video at the highest possible quality for this camera, which is 4K at 30 frames per second (fps). I was very impressed with both.

For its target audience of beginning content creators, I’d say it delivers: right now, you can get a two-lens “creator kit” from Nikon for around $1,000.00, which includes the camera body, two decent lenses, a tripod, Rode external mic, and remote. That’s just a little more expensive than single-lens kits for the Sony ZV-E10 or Canon R 10. If you’re buying just the body and kit lens, though, the price is almost the same across the spectrum for this category of camera—all of them cost around $800.

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Design

The ergonomics of the Z30 are typical Nikon. It’s got a deep grip you can hold onto that feels good in the hand, the shutter button and on/off switch are where you’d expect them to be, and relevant buttons/dials are usually within range of your thumb and index finger.

Despite its size, this camera feels substantial. It’s got a good weight in the hand and the included neck strap is just fine for carrying it around. I didn’t find it getting in my way too much when out and about shooting, though if I were keeping it for the long haul, I’d probably invest in a wrist strap.

One thing about this camera some people probably won’t like is that it has no viewfinder. Instead, you use the back LCD screen. That’s normal for a mirrorless setup, but if you’ve only ever shot with a DSLR, it’s like always using live view to shoot. It took some getting used to, but I didn’t mind it, especially since I know I’d never use this camera to shoot more than personal photos for fun or videos for social media.

The back LCD screen tilts all the way out and flips around, perfect for vlogging. Out of the box, it’s set to enter “self-portrait mode,” which is when you flip the screen around to see yourself while holding the camera. It uses eye autofocus to find its subject, and you can either press the shutter or tap the screen to take a photo with a three-second timer. Of the test selfies I took with this mode on, most of them were in focus and sharp, though the camera did miss focus a couple of times.

As a DSLR shooter, I primarily used the manual d-pad to navigate the camera menu, but slowly got used to the touchscreen controls and was using them both by the end of my time with it. You can set the autofocus to off, tap-to-focus, or focus-and-shoot, all with a tap of the LCD screen. Aperture and ISO can also be changed via touchscreen, too. I found it quicker and more efficient to just use the click-wheel for those, but by the time I finished with this camera, I was using a balance of manual buttons and the touchscreen and had zero problem with it. Later model DSLRs like the Canon 5D Mk IV and D850 already had touchscreens, albeit not as sensitive, so this seemed like a natural progression.

There’s a hot shoe on top—a bracket that allows you to attach external, battery-powered accessories to the camera—for attaching accessories like a flash or high-end mic, something you don’t often see on APS-C cameras. The Z30 comes with a built-in stereo mic that sounds surprisingly good. You can configure it a few different ways to filter out some ambient noise and focus more on the range of your voice. It’s not the same as a fancy studio mic, but more than adequate for beginners looking for a run-and-gun vlog camera they can set to auto and use right away. For a look (and listen) at how every setting with the Z30’s internal mic sounds, check out this video from Noel Guevara.

You also get the standard mic input jack on the side, as well as a mini HDMI port and USB-C connection for charging. The battery compartment is also the memory card compartment, with space for a single SD card.

There’s also a tally light on the front of the camera body to let you know when video is recording, a must if you’re filming yourself.

Stills

The Z30 is a mirrorless APS-C camera, meaning it has a smaller sensor than more expensive, feature-rich offerings like the Z6II, Z7II, and Z9. But that doesn’t mean the image quality is bad.

The 21-megapixel sensor is just slightly lower resolution than my 24.6-megapixel full-frame DSLR, the Nikon D750. Its autofocus is, without a doubt, superior to the D750’s, which isn’t surprising as it was just released in 2022 and the D750 came out in 2014.

Images were sharp and detailed, with dynamic range slightly surpassing my D750 even in lower light scenarios. I was sent the camera body with Nikon’s 15-50mm kit zoom lens, among the most basic lenses they have, and the quality of what I shot was still on par with my D750.

I was a bit limited by the aperture range of the lens—3.5 at the wide end of 15mm to 6.3 at the closer range of 50mm—so my ISO had to crank higher in certain scenarios than if I were using a faster lens with a wider aperture like f/1.8 or f/1.4. That said, images up to around 1000 ISO were still eminently usable, especially once I took down the noise in Lightroom. Noise was still present, but looked more like film grain than digital noise. If I’d had, say, a Nikkor 35mm 1.8 Z lens attached to this body, I think the results would’ve been top notch. The image below was shot at 1000 ISO and cleaned up in post:

Everything about shooting with the Z30 reminded me of an upgraded version of my trusty D3300. Color reproduction was good, and sharpness was more than what I expected to get from a cheaper kit lens.

There’s even an option for time-lapse photography that I unfortunately didn’t get to use, but sounds fun to mess with, especially for shooting something like a waterfall landscape or star trails.

Subject tracking for photos was adequate, though I wouldn’t suggest using this camera for sports or fast action. Selfies were mostly sharp, and a bee perched on a plant stayed mostly in focus when I took a few rapid burst shots as the plant blew in the wind. Truly silent shooting was also something that was great to have when I took this camera out on the street to take photos, though I found myself wanting a faster lens so I could let more light in to crank my shutter speed higher and better freeze the action of the people walking by.

The wide-angle end of the kit lens makes it amazing for architectural photography, though, and I got some great shots walking through downtown Houston. The Z30’s battery also held up very well, with hardly a dent after around an hour of shooting on a full charge.

All in all, a very respectable still camera, especially for the price point, that can perform above its weight class when paired with a good prime lens.

Video

The video files from this camera look great. I recorded a bunch of clips in 4K while out and about and they look crisp, with good color. While slow-mo isn’t an option in 4K, you can record slowed clips that still look plenty good in 1080p. As video isn’t my forte, I kept the camera in auto mode most of the time I was recording—and the clips still looked great on social media.

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Indoors at night, some noise did start showing up in the footage at higher ISO settings, but that’s more because of the lens I was using. If I had something that went to f/1.8 or higher, I don’t think low light recording would’ve been as difficult. Nikon’s standard 35mm f/1.8 lens ($699) or third party lenses like the Viltrox 14mm 1.4 ($329) would both be great options for that.

Eye-tracking autofocus was spot on in video mode, locking onto my eye and never losing focus when the camera was pointed my way despite me moving it around pretty erratically and zooming in and out with the kit lens while focus was locked on my eye.

The Z30 doesn’t have in-body image stabilization (IBIS), using digital stabilization similar to your smartphone camera instead. However, the kit lens I paired it with did have vibration reduction (VR), and with the two of them together, the footage was pretty smooth.

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If you prefer to color grade your footage, you can set video recording to the “flat” color profile in the video recording menu, but the more cinematic log profiles of fancier cameras aren’t available at this price point. Again, auto mode is more than accurate the majority of the time, but this camera can certainly be used as a budget indoor studio cam for YouTube videos and the like.

For an idea of what it looks like to use this camera with a good lens, pro lighting, and a better mic, check out this video from photographer and YouTuber Jared Polin, where he tests a pre-production version of this camera in his studio.

I recorded everything in the max resolution of 4K at 30fps while testing this camera. 25 and 24 fps are also available, and you can record slow-mo footage in 1080p at 120 fps, which still looks great on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. The better your lens, the crisper your footage will look, but the kit lens held up well.

Drawbacks

As I said above, I would’ve liked an electronic viewfinder with this camera. It’s definitely not a dealbreaker, but does take some getting used-to.

Some of the controls felt clunky at times. To switch back and forth from auto ISO mode, for example, you have to hold down the ISO button on the top of the camera and turn the front click-wheel at the same time, which felt awkward. I found myself accidentally pressing buttons when picking up the camera; luckily, it was pretty much always off when that happened.

Charging the camera was also a little annoying. It doesn’t come with a wall wart, just a USB cable, so you’re stuck relying on something like a computer if you don’t have a spare sitting around. But the cable stopped transferring power anytime my computer went to sleep, so I couldn’t leave it connected overnight for a long charge. I ended up using the charger from my Android phone, which has the same USB-C connector, and that worked fine.

There’s also no percentage readout for the battery, so you’re left guessing a bit as to how much power you’ve got left. There’s just a three-bar battery symbol on the LCD screen, which has a tendency to go from mostly full to mostly empty pretty quickly. Nikon estimates around 75 minutes of shooting time at 4K 30fps, and DPReview got 65 minutes in the wild, so that seems to track.

The first time I took this camera out, it got low very quickly. The battery read full but dissipated after less than an hour of shooting stills and video. However, when I carried this camera around shooting stills for over an hour on a full charge, it didn’t seem to put a dent in the battery, so I’d estimate you can get two-three hours of photo time out of this camera easily.

Should I buy the Nikon Z30 Mirrorless Camera?

All in all, I couldn’t find much not to like about this camera. It’s very entry-level, but can stretch beyond that with the right tools. Will this be your go-to wedding photography shooter? No. But as long as you take it for what it is—a fun camera that’s main strength is run-and-gun video—you won’t be disappointed. In fact, you might be pleasantly surprised. It has a couple advantages over its closes competition, the Sony ZV-E10, that would make me choose it over the Sony if I wanted a vlogging camera: the ability to record 4K at 30fps without a crop, and the simplified “flat” color profile that makes footage easier to grade later on.

This camera’s strength is its ability to deliver a lot of quality for the price point in an easy-to-use package. I’d recommend it as a vlogging camera for a beginning YouTuber, or if you’re looking for something cheap to take traveling, or if you want to try out mirrorless without spending a ton of cash.

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An image of a 3-month-old lion cub falling out of a tree has been named the overall winner of this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

The moment was captured by Jennifer Hadley in the Serengeti, Tanzania, late one afternoon, and the image fought off competition from 5,000 other entries.

“It didn’t even occur to me that he would make a go of getting down by himself in the most un-cat like fashion. I mean, how often do cats fall out of trees?” Hadley said in a press release from the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

“No one expected this to happen and of course we were concerned for his safety but happily as cats do, he righted himself just in time and landed on all fours and ran off with his siblings. A happy ending for a hapless kitty who didn’t quite know how to get down from a tree.”

Hadley also won the Affinity Photo 2 People’s Choice Award for her image of a standoffish penguin snubbing his mate, titled “Talk to the Fin.”

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Hadley won both the overall award and the People’s Choice award. – Jennifer Hadley/Comedy Wildlife 2022

As well as providing some light-hearted fun, organizers want to raise awareness around wildlife conservation. According to the press release, 10% of net revenue will be donated to the Whitley Fund for Nature – a UK charity that supports conservation leaders working in their home countries across the Global South.

A photo of two gray triggerfish smiling broadly for the camera won the Underwater Category Award for Arturo Telle Thiemann, while Jia Chen won the Amazing Internet Portfolio Award for her series of photos depicting a Cooper’s Hawk playing football with a pine cone in Canada.

The image of a serene heron oblivious to the wide jaws of a hippo yawning behind it won the Creatures of the Air Category Award for Jean Jacques Alcalay, and Arshdeep Singh won the Think Tank Photo Junior Category for his shot of an owl winking inside a pipe.

In addition to the category winners, there were 10 entries that were recognized as highly commended winners.

In 2021, the overall winner of the competition was Ken Jensen’s picture of a monkey caught in a painful position on a wire.

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HOLYOKE — The Whiting Street Reservoir Study Committee released a final report in November that said the reservoir should be used as a place for passive recreation into the future while remaining a potential water source for the city.

The City Council formed the committee in 2019 after it recognized Holyoke Water Works faced significant costs to repair the reservoir’s spillway. The committee was tasked with reviewing what it would cost to maintain the reservoir and repurpose the area all the while “ensuring that reasonable environmental considerations are maintained.”

The seven-person committee reviewed current environmental laws, regulations, protections and how they affected how the reservoir was currently used and neighboring properties. The process included a series of public meetings and considering “potential new resources including expanded uses.”

The report emphasized protecting Whiting Street Reservoir through restrictive conservation measures.

According to the report, the reservoir was built around 1890 to store water from a smaller reservoir to the east. Whiting Street owned a massive parcel that stretched along the foot of Mount Tom.

Holyoke Water Works owns and operates the facility, and the Water Works Commission controls access and uses. Though a nonpotable water resource, Whiting Street Reservoir must abide by “strict” safety and environmental regulations.

Permitted activities inside Whiting Reservoir include walking, jogging, hiking, biking, nature photography and other passive pursuits. Swimming, fishing, boating, dog walking, horseback riding, motor vehicles and alcoholic drinks are forbidden.

“Structural safety of the reservoir is an important issue since Interstate 91 is only 1,000 feet due east and downstream from the Whiting Street Reservoir dam and main outfall, and dozens of residences are directly downstream of the reservoir,” the report states.

The study offered several key recommendations, such as making sure the area is available for Holyoke residents for passive recreation through conservation restrictions while keeping its 550 million gallons of water capacity available to the city, should a future need arise.

The committee also recommended creating a statement and a plan in order to help direct the area’s use and manage its resources, implementing it with an “Areawide Management Council” that includes neighboring property owners to help “coordinate area management.”

In talks with the committee, the Water Works clarified that the City of Holyoke would need the reservoir’s water capacity in the future.

“Furthermore, regulatory agencies that oversee public water supply are also likely to require water filtration at all City reservoirs,” the study states. “The filtration requirements will allow the (Whiting Street Reservoir) to maintain its standby public water supply status or to meet standards if pushed into service to meet water supply needs.”

A spillway renovation project is slated for 2023 was dubbed a “significant financial commitment,” along with installing a filtration system.

“This means that public access, and the type and intensity of public recreational uses, will need to be planned, controlled, and limited to protect the reservoir,” the report reads.

Cochrane photographers and good friends Jo-Anne Oucharek and Jacquie Matechuk went on the same trip to Alaska this fall. They often stood shoulder-to-shoulder, looked at the same scene, and each applied their own creative lens to the wildlife they observed.

Now, they both have been named to a short list of wildlife photographers who will represent Canada in the World Photographic Cup (WPC), an annual nature and wildlife photography competition.

And they are each other’s biggest cheerleaders.

Matechuk, a bronze medallist at the WPC in 2020, is thrilled to see her friend enjoy the fruits of her creative labours, just as she herself did a couple of years ago.

“It’s kinda fun. I had a huge opportunity a couple of years ago in the competition, I got my time in the spotlight so it’s fun to step aside and share it with someone else,” she said. “It’s really exciting for her.”

She said she doesn’t feel like she’s competing with Oucharek at all. The longer the conversation goes, the more it starts to sound like a ‘passing of the torch.’

Matechuk is getting a kick out of watching her close friend’s enthusiastic response to the recognition.

“This is her big breakthrough for an image that is fantastic, really – and I couldn’t be more excited for her. I can sit back and take in her excitement, listen to her tell her story and light up like a tree,” she said.

Matechuk flew to Rome, Italy in 2021 for a WPC-sponsored event, where she rubbed shoulders with an even larger group of talented photographers – previous award winners from around the world. It’s an experience she won’t soon forget.

“It was the most amazing time – I made friends from all over the world, most [of whom] I’m in contact with today,” she said. “It was incredible. It was funny how much we all had in common.”

Matechuk is also an ambassador for Canon Canada, which entails putting on seminars and training talks for budding photographers. Getting paid for doing something she loves is a dream come true.

“It feels like that’s my retirement, and I won’t be working anymore,” she said.

She’s been a Cochranite long enough to remember when there were no traffic lights in town.

“Back when we used to exchange phone numbers with just the last four digits,” she said with a laugh.

She is also co-owner of Cochrane Floors and More with her husband.

Matechuk’s Reportage category entry, ‘Connected’ is a picture of sockeye salmon clustering in a stream while a park ranger approaches the school of fish. Her wildlife entry, ‘The Tender Side’ is a shot of a mother grizzly nose-to-nose with her cub.

Oucharek’s entry, ‘The Catch’ depicts an Alaskan brown bear right before it catches a salmon in its jaws in Katmai National Park in Alaska.

“We chartered a float plane, flew into remote areas and hung out with the brown bears,” Oucharek said.

As a certified bear guide, she said she is aware of the sensitivities involved in encroaching on their habitat.

“It’s amazing watching how they react to people, to other bears,” she said.

A passionate nature photographer, Oucharek took a course to obtain her bear guide certification earlier this year, and is currently enrolled in an ornithology course. Capturing images of birds in her backyard was where it all started several years ago.

International judging for the WPC has already concluded and the World Top 10 images will be announced in January, followed by the big reveal on March 17, 2023, when the WPC panel will unveil a new collection of visual artistry live from Singapore. The ceremony will recognize outstanding achievements in each of the eight categories before tallying combined points to present one country with the World Cup.

Canadian entries can be viewed on the Team Canada website: wpcteamcanada.com.

Some of Oucharek’s work is on display at the Route 22 Artist’s Collective Gallery in Cochrane. Her work can also be accessed at natureinmybackyard.ca.

Matechuk’s work is available on her website: broughttolife.shootproof.com. Her next free workshop, scheduled for Jan. 16, is on sports and action photography. For more information, go to canoncreatorlab.ca/events.

The Five Seasons Ski Team, who puts on shows and events to entertain the Cedar Rapids community all summer long, is dealing with an incident of theft of two of their trailers, containing what club organizers say is upwards of $12,000 in missing sound equipment.

The vice president of the ski team, Ryan Furnish first discovered the theft on Thursday, according to KCRG.  Amps, speakers, microphones, and other pieces of the sound system for the show were gone. Club members want to emphasize it’s not just their specific group that suffers from such a theft.

“There’s a lot of fans and members, people that’ll come watch our show every Thursday, and it’ll change it for them too,” Furnish said. “And they’ve put in a lot of work and they’ve helped donate to us and keep us going and so they stole from the community, not just from the Five Seasons Ski Team.”

It’s an extensive loss for the team, as Furnish told KCRG:

Every year we struggle just having enough fundraising to cover operating costs. As small as we are, to fundraise $12,000, it’s going to take a lot of work

If you’d like to help them recoup some of their loss you can find out how to donate at the Five Seasons Ski Team website. A Facebook post on the team’s page also tells you how to donate to the team’s Venmo or Paypal.

They’ve also posted photos of the items stolen for the public to be looking out for.

 

Want to keep up to date with the latest in local and music news? Download our app! It’s completely free and not only will you be the first to know about breaking news, but we’ll also keep you updated on concerts and other events coming to the area. You’ll also have exclusive opportunities to win tickets. What are you waiting for? Get the free app today.

 

LOOK: See Photos of the Year From the International Photography Awards

In a drone photograph by Yevhen Samuchenko, Lake Lemuria, the so-called “Dead Sea of Ukraine,” takes on a surreal, otherworldly quality. Its waters turned pink by algae, its shoreline streaked with white salt deposits, the body of water might easily be confused for an abstract painting were it not for the presence of two tiny figures and their nearby car.

“I wanted to show the scale of the landscape, because when you see the very small people, you understand how big the location is,” said Samuchenko, via a translator, on a video call from his home in the Ukrainian city of Odesa. “But I also want the viewer to see themselves as being like these people — to invite them into the photo.”

The photographer’s mission to showcase Ukraine’s natural beauty has taken on new urgency following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. Since Samuchenko captured the image, titled “White Car & Two People,” in 2019, the region in which the lake is located, Kherson Oblast, has been partially occupied by Vladimir Putin’s forces.

When Samuchenko visited, however, the lake was a peaceful spot — one reachable only via “very bad roads” and with very little tourist infrastructure, he explained. The figures standing face-to-face in the image are two of Samuchenko’s fellow photographers, though he says the moment shared by his two friends was spontaneous, not posed.

© Provided by CNN

Samuchenko’s photos of Lake Lemuria have been recognized by several major photography awards. – Yevhen Samuchenko

“White Car & Two People” has since been shortlisted for the prestigious Earth Photo 2022 competition, while the photographer’s wider series on Lake Lemuria, titled “At the Pink Planet,” has been recognized by Sony World Photography Awards and Travel Photographer of the Year competitions.

‘My frontline’

Samuchenko recently donated his drone to the Ukrainian military, and he says it is currently impossible for him to operate as a photographer. But in a conflict that may hinge on the support of sympathetic allies, he hopes his work can still contribute to the war effort by appealing to hearts and minds. “It’s my frontline,” he said.

Over the summer, Samuchenko published a book featuring almost 150 of his photos, including many from regions devastated by conflict, such as Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr Oblasts. “The Beauty of Ukraine,” which was shot over the course of two years, acts as a survey of the country’s vast and varied geography, spanning both natural and man-made landscapes.

Like his images of Lake Lemuria, the painterly photos reveal hidden symmetries, patterns and shapes. Canyons, riverbeds, forests and farmland burst with color and take on a surreal new beauty when viewed from above.

© Provided by CNN

Samuchenko’s new book shows Ukraine’s vast and varied landscapes. – Yevhen Samuchenko

Samuchenko’s book was already in production when the war began. Some of the places depicted have since been damaged, according to author Lucia Bondar, who wrote the accompanying text.

“Even nature has suffered because of this terrible war,” she said, adding: “It’s very important to show the world now the other side of Ukraine. Every day, the whole planet sees these dramatic pictures on their screens, in real time. They see this pain and these tears… In our book they can see the other side of Ukraine – of our people, of our lives and of pure beauty.”

“The Beauty of Ukraine: Landscape Photography,” published by teNeues, is available now.

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It’s the most popular photography competition in the world—because the winning photos are some the funniest moments of mirth on Earth.

Some of the most famous photographers from 85 countries submitted their most spontaneous snaps, capturing the amusing side of nature, in a bid to win the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

The contest was founded in 2015 by Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, both professional photographers and passionate conservationists who wanted create a competition that focused on the lighter, humorous side of wildlife photography.

The online competition is free to enter, yet both money and awareness are raised for a charity partner each year—in 2022, the fantastic Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN)—with 10% of net revenue donated.

The overall winner of this year’s competition, which saw 5,000 incredible entries, is Jennifer Hadley, for her perfectly timed photograph of a lion cub losing its grip on a tree trunk entitled ‘Not so cat-like reflexes.’

The image was captured in the Serengeti, when Jennifer managed to capture the exact moment a young 3-month-old cub attempted to descend from a tree, and it didn’t go so well. She had already positioned her camera, then the unexpected happened.

“I think part of what makes this contest great is that most of these photos probably happen by complete accident and that was certainly the case with the lion cub falling out of the tree,” she explained. “How often do cats fall out of trees?”

LOOK: Magnificent Picture of Ape ​​Cuddling Another Species is Finalist in Wildlife Photographer of the Year – SEE Photos

“It was probably his first time ever in a tree and he decided to just go for it. Happily, as cats do, he righted himself just in time.”

As the 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Jennifer won an African safari trip to Kenya. She also won the Affinity Photo Award and People’s Choice Award for her charming shot of two penguins (pictured above).

“I really love this photo contest because it’s just so different from anything else and really shows off the personalities of the animals,” says Jennifer.

The Creatures of the Air Category Award was won by Jean Jacques Alcalay with ‘Misleading African Viewpoints’, which shows a hippo looking like he’s about to scoff a great blue heron whole.

The bird seems completely oblivious—maybe that is because he knows that, in fact, the hippo is actually having a yawn.

“With so much going on in the world, we could all use a bumper dose of fun and laughter and this year’s finalists have definitely delivered that,” said Sullam in a press release.

Sullam summed it up perfectly: “When you see these amazing photographs, like the wallaby at sunset—seemingly about to launch another wallaby into space—it makes you smile and wonder at the incredible animals that are on this earth with us.”

CHECK OUT: Mom’s Zoo Pic is Adorably Photo-bombed by Stingray With Remarkable Resemblance to Her Daughter

SEND These Adorable Moments of Nature to Your Flock by Sharing on Social Media… AND, Check out the 2021 winning photos: From Cheeky Bears to Goofy Gophers, See the Fun Finalists of the Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards